


Chiaroscuro

by bazmahtaz



Series: The Jackal [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Amputee, Artist Steve Rogers, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Dating, Eventual Smut, F/M, Mentioned James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers - Freeform, POV Steve Rogers, PTSD, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter Feels, Present Tense, Rating May Change, Sarah Rogers raised a Gentleman, Slow Burn, Sort Of, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Sucks at Texting, Steve dates a normal human being, Tags May Change, Veterans, art class
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-04-30 22:42:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 22,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14507070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bazmahtaz/pseuds/bazmahtaz
Summary: Chiaroscuro: The treatment of light and shade in drawing and painting."This close, It gives the impression of a sleeping giant, it's mouth slightly parted, it's eyes closed. Flecks of gold contrast against the subject’s skin like sunlight, chased by claret that reminds Steve of splashes of blood on a battlefield. It's intimate, and soft, but he can see in the flurry of movement still etched into the paint that this isn't, as he had thought before, a portrait of someone who is simply asleep."First bit is loosely based on Miscellea's gorgeous story "The Weight of Light" which you should absolutely read. Everything after that is a mess that fell out of my brain like a thoroughly trashed Athena.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing. Especially not anything ever produced by Marvel. Seriously. My bank statements prove it.

“Do No Harm and Take No Shit”

The shirt is a loose tank top, paint stained and thinned with time. He would argue about the language on it but he finds he appreciates the sentiment too much.

She's one of two women in Steve's still life class, excluding the instructor. The other, a thin middle aged woman who wears a lot of rings and heavily patterned shirts is called Shirley Douglas, but the girl in the tank top hasn't introduced herself to anyone.

She wears baggy sweaters and jeans that hug her thick legs, and a chain around her neck that disappears into her shirt and jangles slightly when she moves. He's never seen her hair, it's always hidden under a slouchy, gray, toque but her eyebrows are a startling jet black that he isn't sure is natural.

He thinks she's maybe thirty years old, but Steve finds that he has no eye for age these days, after all, he’s pushing ninety, and looks as fit and young as he did the day he was frozen.

He takes another look at the table of vases he's supposed to be painting and frowns. Steve finds working in black and white harder than he thinks he should. The light hits the side of one pockmarked, yellow and blue urn with a spatter of colour he isn't sure how to interpret in monotone. When he looks over at Tanktop-Girl’s canvas and sees the gradual slope of medium gray being picked apart with brutal efficiency in black and white. Her lips are pressed into a sharp line as she leans into her composition and swirls her brush in tiny, even strokes that pull the gray of the background up and into the stark brightness of the white.

She stops, pulls away and he feels her eyes move from her canvas to his blatantly staring face and he smiles an apology at her.

She shakes her head, smiling back in response and looks at his canvas, tapping her lips with the handle of her brush. She then takes the two steps between them to look closer, wafting a gentle orange scent as she leans close to his painting.

“I'm not wearing my glasses so I couldn't see yours properly.” she intones. Her voice is low, he thinks, deeper than he expected and a little rough, like she doesn't use it often.

“How do you see the vases?” He asks, maybe a little incredulous.

She laughs softly “That's why I'm not wearing my glasses. You can see light and form better if you don't concentrate on the details.”

He looks at her composition, then at his, and then at the vases. Steve squints, trying to approximate his vision as it was before the serum.

“Oh.” The shapes dim but the tones seem to become more distinct “You're right.”

She huffs a laugh. “I try.” and goes back to her painting.

\---

The following week sees them moving onto a study of drapery, and Steve finds himself squinting at the cotton fabric that has been tossed over a short stack of cardboard boxes to better see the individual tones he is carefully adding to his canvas.

Tanktop-Girl has her glasses on top of her head this time, and is making quick work of the sharp shadows and stark highlights cast by the spotlight.

The instructor, Jennifer Rapskin, steps behind her and he hears them speak quietly. Tanktop-Girl laughs softly and Mrs. Rapskin grins, making a broad gesture toward the subject and lifting her thumb to check the scale of the composition, before nodding and squeezing Tanktop-Girl’s shoulder as she moves over to Steve.

“How are we doing?” she asks, observing Steve’s (admittedly rudimentary) blocks of gray.

“It’s very different from last week.” he remarks, “I feel like I should be farther along.”

She shakes her head “I see you keep looking over at Edith’s work. She's a professional, so it's natural that she might be working faster than you.”

Mrs. Rapskin leaves him with a little more advice, and a name Steve didn't know he wanted to ask for.

\---

Tanktop-girl, Edith, steps back at one point to look at her composition from afar, a long-fingered hand moving to her chin. She leaves white fingerprints against her bronze skin when her hand moves away and Steve tries to silently catch her eye, but she's too absorbed in her work.

They have moved onto painting a collection of sunflowers, still in monotone, though this time they are using shades of yellow instead of gray. The smear of paint on Edith’s chin keeps grabbing at his attention, and he eventually reaches over and nudges her foot gently with his own, she doesn't notice and Steve wonders at how enraptured she is by her own thoughts before trying again, a little harder.

Edith jumps, then shoots him a brief glare before her face softens.

“Sorry.” he says quietly “you have a-” he points at his own chin in the approximate area of the smear.

“Oh!” she smiles, wiping her face on the sleeve of her already paint-covered hoodie “Thanks, sorry, I thought you were… y’know” she indicates her leg with a gesture.

He frowns looking down at her leg, not understanding until she lifts up the cuff of her pants slightly and he sees the telltale shine of polyurethane.

He looks back up at her and shakes his head quickly. “Not at all, ma’am, I had no idea.”

She grins at him “Good to know the new one is that convincing, I used to have a metal stick attached to a life sized Barbie foot.”

Steve feels the urge to ask her how she lost the leg but thinks that’s probably rude, so he doesn't. Instead he says “The professor told me you do this professionally?”

Edith nods “Yeah, mostly portraits of people's kids and dogs because they sell well, but I have a show coming up in Hell’s Kitchen of some of my less commercial stuff.” she reaches into the bowling bag next to her and tosses him a postcard.

“Edith Crow, Hiraeth, an Exhibition.” is followed by the address and date of the vernissage. Steve flips the card over and sees an image of a man’s face, eyes closed as though in a deep sleep, picked out in acrylic reds and blues against a black canvas.

“It's beautiful” he says honestly “why are you here if you're this good?”

Steve thinks she blushes a bit, privately thinks that it looks pretty on her, and Edith turns back to her painting “I was told once that the best way to stop being good at something is to stop practicing.”

Steve nods, turning to his own canvas reluctantly.

He thinks he’s beginning to understand exactly what she means.

\---

The gallery was a distillery back in the forties, though not a very good one. Steve vaguely remembers the slightly sour taste of the beer they sold to a few local pubs and isn't surprised that the place was re-purposed.

It definitely wasn't the sort of place he would have worn a tie to, back in the day.

There's a small crowd inside, made up of smartly dressed folks gathered in loose groups around large, unframed canvases painted in vibrant reds, blacks, and blues. The one closest to him is the same on the back of the flyer, but nearly as tall as Steve himself.

This close, It gives the impression of a sleeping giant, it's mouth slightly parted, it's eyes closed. Flecks of gold contrast against the subject’s skin like sunlight, chased by claret that reminds Steve of splashes of blood on a battlefield. It's intimate, and soft, but he can see in the flurry of movement still etched into the paint that this isn't, as he had thought before, a portrait of someone who is simply asleep.

The title card on the wall beside the piece says “Death Mask of Lt. Samuel Ramsay, 10/10/10” and suddenly the polyurethane leg and jangling necklace make sense.

The next painting is morbidly familiar, silhouetted figures on an explosive red and bottle blue backdrop, soldiers at attention with splatters of scarlet disrupting their otherwise cookie cutter perfection. “Seven Thousand” says the title card and he has a memory of a casualty report and an account of recent history.

“You came.” says a husky, feminine voice behind him and he turns to see the artist herself: Not a tank top in sight, Edith is in a loose white blouse and gray pants. The inky black of her hair falling in loose waves around her shoulders. She's wearing makeup, a smudge of kohl around her eyes and lipstick a shock of red. It's strange, and Steve thinks she would be more comfortable in her hoodie and jeans.

“Why wouldn't I?”

She chuckles, a hand rubbing the back of her neck “I dunno, usually these things are only hipsters and modern art nerds.”

“Are you saying I'm not hip?” Steve deadpans, and feels a flutter of nerves in his chest when she smiles a little wider at him.

“Eids!” comes a voice from nearby and the moment is lost as she turns her head to greet the lanky newcomer with purple hair.

The man drapes an arm over her shoulder and looks at Steve with a calculating eye that reminds him of some of the scientists he's worked with. Its vaguely uncomfortable, more so when the man speaks in a stage whisper out of the corner of his mouth to Edith and says “Who's the Captain America lookin’ dude?”

It wouldn't be the first time he’d been recognized, but it would be the first time someone was this rude about it…

“Don't be an ass, Mark.” Edith huffs elbowing the man gently in the side. “He's from my still life class… and I'm sorry, but I don't think I've ever actually gotten your name?”

Steve feels his nerves flutter again, like a caged bird under his ribs. She doesn't know. He's just another person to her but the second he drops his name…

He briefly considers using a fake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited for spelling and stuff. 15/03/19


	2. Two

He misses the next class, the next chance to see her, because he's chasing down an alien bent on world domination at the behest of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Her eyes had gone wide at the sound of his name, then she had stammered an apology and saluted him smartly before excusing herself and disappearing into a crowd of patrons.

Steve barely has time to think between trying to work with this new team, with Tony Stark especially, and then trying to prevent skyscrapers from toppling in Manhattan as the Chitauri and Loki carve their way through the city.

Class is cancelled the next week because the power is still out.

The week after, Steve finds time between government debriefings to attend class, but Edith’s usual seat empty, and the rest of the class looks at him like he's a ghost.

\---

He buys “Seven Thousand”, overpays for it because he can, and hangs it in his living room above his record player.

Three days later, while he’s grocery shopping,his phone rings.

“Is this Captain Rogers?”

“Miss. Crow?” He tries to keep his voice from sounding too pleased, too much like he's been thinking of her.

“Just.. just Edith, sir.”

He feels the grin spread unbidden across his cheeks “Just Steve, then, if it's all the same.”

“Of… of course. Steve. Hi.” she laughs, it sounds a little canned through the phone but he can picture her smile even as he scans the selection of various milk products ahead of him. “Is this a good time? You're probably busy. I can call-”

“No! No. I'm just at the store.” He sounds nervous. She must hear it in his voice.

“Oh. Alright. Um…” she pauses, and he can hear her take a few breaths “I saw that you bought one of my pieces, from the show, and I got your number from the delivery slip and um… I just wanted to thank you, I guess.” she says quickly and he swears he can hear a faint “oh my God” a moment later from the other end of the receiver.

“It's beautiful.” he replies “I figured I would snatch it up before someone else did.”

“I'm glad you like it.” she says, and softly “I can't think of anyone else better suited to it.”

Another pause, and Steve thinks his mouth must be running away with him when he says “You haven't been in class lately.”

She makes a noise, like a groan “I know. I'm sorry. I've been having a hard time since… since the attack.”

“Are you okay?”

She laughs, but it's humorless “Yeah. I'm fine. Just all the explosions kind of put me on edge. It didn't hit my building but I could hear… and… um…” another deep breath “PTSD sucks.”

They called it shell shock in his day, and he's seen enough men with shaking fingers and haunted eyes to know how not okay she must be feeling. Something twists unpleasantly in his chest. “I'm sorry.” he says. “if there's anything I can do…”

“Thank you, it'll pass. Always does.”

Quiet again, and Steve's mouth moves without input from his brain, again. “Would you like to get a drink sometime?”

\---

The pub is a quiet little hole in the wall that he's been assured, by Stark of all people, is some kind of local hidden gem. The Shamrock Taphouse gleams with dark wood and brass finishes, plush booths, and an elderly bartender who putters around the place at a speed that belies his age.

Steve sits in a booth by one of the windows, looking out at the dusky street. The lamps stuttering to life as the clock in the corner chimes six and the sun begins to dip behind the buildings of the Lower East side in a prelude to evening.

He sees her turn the corner, walking quickly with her bowling bag slung over one shoulder, favouring her good leg ever so slightly. Steve feels his heart leap into his throat, his palms sweat, his brain races as adrenaline surges through his blood.

The bell at pub door jangles merrily and he stands, going to pull out a chair that doesn't exist, recovering by lifting a hand and catching Edith’s attention.

He doesn't know what he’s doing. He hasn't been on a date, or whatever this is, in seventy years. Steve hasn't looked at a woman since Peggy, and serum be damned he’s still that gawky kid from new New York who always got passed over for Bucky when it came to the opposite sex.

She smiles, seeing him and wandering over with a soft “Hey” and sitting down opposite him with a low sigh.

He follows, dropping into the booth and asking her if she had a long day, literally the only thing his anxious brain could come up with.

She sighs, rubbing the back of her neck absently. “Yeah, double shifts and then a last minute commission for a client's shih tsu. Apparently the dog's birthday is tomorrow and his mummy wants to make all the other country club dog moms jealous.”

“You're joking.”

She laughs, picking up her phone and thumbing the screen a few moments before turning it toward him. “Serious as the plague.”

The screen is cracked in one corner but he can see the brightly lit canvas just fine: A small, fluffy, dog wearing an appropriately sized bowtie, a flat cap, and a dour expression painted in a roccoco collection of warm browns, yellows, and pastel grays on a hazy blue background. Steve can't help but laugh along with her, tension bleeding out of him as he looks at the, frankly, ridiculous animal.

Over several beers he learns that she has two part time jobs on top of her career as a painter. A barista at a local Starbucks, and an “office monkey” as she refers to her second job making photocopies and fetching coffee for a company that sells lawn and garden tools on a home shopping network.

Government pensions for veterans, apparently, aren't what they used to be. Not that they used to be much.

He confides about his own troubles with the bureaucracy, the struggle to establish the fact that he’s alive in the legal sense, and in his nineties despite the physical evidence to the contrary.

Edith grins, “Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen a nonagenarian who looks as good as you.”

He blushes to his ears, clears his throat. “Thank you, I guess I got my beauty sleep.”

“Wanna lend me some? I haven't gotten more than five hours a night since I was nineteen.”

His brain unhelpfully supplies him with several exhausting activities he'd enjoy doing with her and he chokes on his beer.

 _Smooth, Steve_.

\---

She lives nearby, and he offers to walk her home, taking her bag for her as they meander slowly down the quiet, dimly lit street.

They had stayed until nearly midnight, chatting and drinking. She had switched to soda later in the evening, “I sucked at walking while drunk even when I had both legs.” and his metabolism made getting even close to tipsy nearly impossible.

Her building is a squat, six story low rise a few blocks North of the Taphouse. Red brick and gray stone balconies overlooking a small park across the street and a cheery garden in the front.

He walks her up the steps to the door and she's still smiling, thanking him and taking her bag, brushing her fingers against his for a moment and sending a warmth spreading through his veins like a shot of bourbon.

She bites her lip, blushing prettily and looking up at him. Brown eyes glancing to his hand and then back to his face.

He wants to kiss her. Wants it more than he's ever wanted anything. But Sarah Rogers raised a gentleman so instead he takes Edith’s hand, tan skinned and long fingered and smelling faintly of oranges, and presses his lips chastely to her knuckles.

“Can I see you again?”

“I would love that. Can I text you?”

“Of course. I'm not very good at it so…”

“Yeah. No worries.”

They stand there, on her doorstep, with her hand in his for a little to long. He's grinning like an idiot but so is she and when she slowly, reluctantly pulls her fingers from his grasp and backs toward the door he can't help but wish he could follow her inside.


	3. Three

Of course, Stark points out Steve's “shit eating grin” the next day as they meet for more debriefings and a discussion of a possible next mission that might require their team's unique set of skills. Romanoff, surprisingly, backs the billionaire up with a sarcastic quip.

Barton claps him on the shoulder and slips him the address to an Italian restaurant on forty third that is “classy but not fancy” according to the agent and says no more.

His new teammates are eerily perceptive, and Steve's not sure he likes it.

Later that day his phone vibrates in his pocket and he reaches for it faster than he’s ever reached for any pistol in his entire career.

_15:16 from Edith Crow_

_“Hey!”_

He looks around, Fury is massaging the bridge of his nose while Stark goes on about moving the team into Stark Tower for “easier assembly”. Nobody is looking at Steve, so he replies, punching each letter with a single finger as he scans the digital keyboard.

_15:17 from You_

_“Hey. How is your day?”_

He puts the phone away hastily and tries to pay attention to the circular conversation,

His phone vibrates again and he looks down at it in his lap.

_15:17 from Edith Crow_

_“Boring. I had to fax a sales order for a garden gnome that looks like godzilla. Otherwise the usual. You?”_

He presses his mouth in a line to keep from chuckling aloud. He’s fairly certain he doesn’t want to have any of Fury’s attention drawn to him while the director is looking this aggravated.

_15:19 from You_

_“Meetings all day. Think Fury might murder Stark.”_

_15:19 from Edith Crow_

_“He better not. Stark is funding the indie art expo this year and I have an entry.”_

_15:21 from You_

_“I'll be sure to intervene if the beatings start looking lethal.”_

_15:21 from Edith Crow_

_“lol, thanks ;p”_

Steve looks at what he assumes is an acronym, and the odd semicolon and lowercase p with a furrowed brow.

A few moments later, Barton elbows him gently in the side and slides a piece of scrap paper over to him.

“lol = laughing out loud. ;p = a winking face” is scribbled above a crude drawing of a smiling face with its tongue sticking out and one eye closed.  Steve stares at the paper a moment, then pans his eyes over to Barton, who is not being subtle at all at over-the-shoulder text message reading.

Barton raises an eyebrow.

Steve shakes his head.

The meeting continues for another hour and a half.

\---

Still life class is two days later, and Edith’s easel is a little closer to his. They're painting an assembly of plastic fruit, and if he's not paying as much attention to his brushwork as usual he thinks he has an excellent excuse.

As usual, even with her glances at him, her own painting turns out beautifully and she finishes out the class covered in smears of red and orange.

He helps her pack up her things, his own brushes already organized and tucked away as he worked. And they linger in the community center hallway even after Mrs. Rapskin has left. They talk about work, class, Edith laughing at his admittedly outdated sense of humour. It’s only when the overhead lights in the hallway turn off that they make their way outside.

“Barton, one of my teammates, he told me about this restaurant. Italian? If you're interested.” Steve walks across the parking lot to his waiting motorbike, pausing as they get nearer to saying goodnight.

She nods, smiling softly “Dress code?”

“I was told classy, not fancy.” Steve isn't sure he could handle seeing her in a dress. He feels his imagination has enough fuel as it is. With the summer heat she’s foregone the hoodie, showing off toned arms that seem to glow amber under the street lamps, and the soft column of her neck framed by a few loose, dark, waves escaping from her ever present toque.

She hums, stepping a little closer, “I'm sure I have something In my closet.” and in a moment that Steve manages to at once sear into his memory and blank out on entirely, she stretches up on her toes and kisses his cheek. “Pick me up at six on Saturday?”

He thinks he might explode, but somehow he manages to say “Y-yeah. It's a date.”

\---

Peggy is lucid when he visits her on Thursday morning. The soft breeze ruffling the white curtains of her room as she sits in bed reading, the stereo playing uptempo jazz quietly in the corner.

She’s still beautiful to him. Age and time haven't stolen her place in his heart, though it hurts to see her bedridden. She’s fourtunate, and he’s glad, that she receives many visitors and has the attention of a team of talented doctors at her beck and call.

She smiles, eyes bright and wrinkling at the corners behind a pair of glasses as he steps into the room, a bouquet of sunny yellow flowers in hand. “Steve” she says accent, too, faded with time “You shouldn’t have.”

He grins, leaning down to press a soft kiss to her cheek “I wanted to.” He replies, and pulls away to replace the wilting ones from his previous visit in the cheery blue vase they came in, arranging them carefully and setting them in place by the window. He pulls up his usual chair, and helps Peggy sit up straighter in bed at her request.

It feels strange, but easier than he expects, to tell her that he has a date.

She chuckles “Of course you do.”

His face is warm, and he looks at his hand next to hers against the pale gray of the comforter “You don’t seem surprised.”

“You’re charming. And handsome. It would be a shame for you to waste it pining after an old flame.” She pats his hand and the contrast hits him a little harder than he’d like. For all that she’s technically three years his junior her fingers have creases and lines his lack. “I married, had children, lived my life. You deserve to live yours too.”

He looks at her, squeezing Peggy’s fingers lightly “You’ll always be my best girl.”

\---

Friday sees a sheaf of papers dropped in front of him as soon as he arrives at Stark Tower.

Inside, several images of men and women alongside an exhaustive description of what exactly has brought them to S.H.I.E.L.D.s attention. Development and deployment of chemical weapons on civilians, experimentation on unwilling human subjects, theft of government property.

It smacks of Hydra’s influence and Steve frowns at the impossibility as he studies the papers carefully. Himself, Romanoff, and Barton, are to travel to London on Sunday Morning to intercept the culprits and prevent a possible attack while Stark and Banner will be spending the next two days trying to develop a method of deployment for the countermeasure in case the worst happens.

He resigns himself to the possibility that his date with Edith will be shorter than he’d like, and immediately feels guilty that that’s what concerns him.

“I’m not exactly thrilled at the short notice either, bud.” Barton claps him on the shoulder and Steve once again gets the feeling that the archer knows more than he’s letting on.

“I have plans on Saturday night.” He says.

Barton snorts a laugh, “Have her sleep over and leave her your key.”

“I-What? No!” Steve’s ears burn “It’s not like that. I’m-”

“Old fashioned?” Clint is grinning at him behind his cup of coffee, “These days second base is pretty much the norm on the first date.”

Steve is going to die of embarrassment. Steve is going to murder Clint Barton. Steve is going to jump back into the ocean and swim to the arctic to resume his tenure as the world’s first superhero popsicle.

\---

 

_12:12 from Edith Crow_

_[Attached 1 Photo]_

_“Hey look who I found!”_

Steve is greeted with an image of paint stained fingers wrapped around Captain America in miniature. An action figure with ball joints and a plastic grin that reminds him of some of the old comics that used to circulate during the war.

_12:13 from You_

_“He looks shady. Watch yourself, soldier.”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clint comes from the Online Dating school of flirtation.
> 
> Also I guess it's kind of gauche to ask for comments but they really DO feed the hamsters that power my fic writing machine so hit me up?


	4. Four

Steve fumbles with his phone, tapping out a quick “I'm in front of your building” and sending it once he’s managed to wipe the sweat from his palms and steady the frantic heart that's fluttering beneath his sternum like a kicked wasps nest. When she replies a moment later that she's on her way down he fidgets with the rubber padded handlebars and watches the door like he’s been assigned to do it.

He sees the silhouetted figure step through the lobby and carefully down the steps before he registers who it is.

An emerald green plaid dress with a boatneck collar and a flared skirt that falls a little past her knees. Dark hair tied up in a loose chignon with a tortoise shell clip and a few rogue strands falling around her face.

“You look amazing.” he says, feeling the urge to brush those stray hairs back with his fingers, more so when she rubs at her neck and blushes, smiling.

“I haven't worn a dress since before I left on my last tour. I don't… um... “ Edith looks off to the side and drops her hand “Anyway. Food?”

Steve smiles, shifting forward a little on the bike and handing her a helmet. She puts it on, sliding in behind him.

He didn't think this part through.

She wraps her arms loosely about his middle, her chest pressed gently to his back and her thighs bracketing his. Edith is warm and solid behind him and that heat shoots straight through him like a sip of good whiskey. Steve inhales deeply to steady himself, and she smells even more keenly of oranges and something else that reminds him of the woods in summer.

When the bike starts moving, he feels her grip a little tighter, and he realizes he only has a few minutes to tamp down the reaction her proximity is stirring in him.

\---

After fifteen minutes feeling like he was burning from the inside out the restaurant is pleasantly cool.

Its softly lit, with quiet music and tables spaced far enough apart to afford patrons a semblance of privacy.

“I don't think I've ever seen that outside of movies.” Edith says as he pulls out a chair and motions for her to sit. “I feel like an actual lady.”

Steve chuckles, taking a seat across from her.  “I hope that's a good thing.”

She flips open her menu without taking her eyes off him “It's refreshing. I don't do this often or anything but in my experience guys have generally, uh… skipped the wooing.”

“Oh.” Steve swallows and turns his gaze to the wine menu. “I didn't do much of this either, but it always seemed to me like the wooing was pretty important.”

She hums in agreement. “I'm inclined to encourage you to continue.”

Between snippets of conversation and bites of tender pancetta, they manage to finish off a bottle of crisp, white wine. Steve cites even further wooing when he refuses to let her see the price of the vintage, and again when he pours it for her. She smiles behind her glass, coffee coloured eyes crinkled with amusement.

She tells him about the paintings that she's sold from her exhibition, and her ideas for the Stark-funded local art gala.

Steve talks about the few details of his mission that he can share, and the culture shock he’s experienced between past and present.

“Everything seems so fast now,” he says “so... immediate? Some of it's good, I can get Intel or send a message without having to wait days for a reply but other things…” He trails off.

“Like relationships?” She offers, somehow seeing the direction he’s going.  
  
He laughs quietly,“Yeah.”

“Like I said,” She fixes him with another amused stare “Most men would have tried to skip the wooing.”

It's not that he doesn't want to… you know.

But he's never gotten there with anyone, and he'd always learned that anything that meant something was supposed to take time. Steve thinks he wants this, whatever it is between Edith and him, to mean something.

She grins, and her fingers brush his gently in the center of the table. “So I suppose I'll have to buy another dress while you're away being a hero. Give you another excuse to dazzle me with your chivalry.”

He frowns, not wanting to think about the mission or the fact that he needs to be ready for pickup at oh-five-hundred tomorrow morning. “It'll give me something to look forward to other than debriefings and paperwork.” As he speaks the pad of her index finger traces lazy patterns between his knuckles, stoking a low fire in his core that makes his pulse quicken and his shirt collar feel too tight.

“Just be safe…” she says, softer than before “I know I can't really ask that. This kind of work is… well, _not_ safe. You can't tell me where you're headed and even the army was no guarantees. But…” she looks at him fondly, her gaze suffused with what he thinks is an echo of the heat he’s feeling, and her hand halts it’s mapping of his own to slip around it and grasp his fingers “I'm enjoying this.”

He swallows thickly, running his thumb over the back of her hand in a slow, exploratory gesture that makes him feel less than chaste. He thinks she feels it too, her lips parting slightly and her brown eyes so dark they could almost be black. “I'm enjoying this too.” he says quietly, and then “I'll call you? If I can.”

“Yeah.” she says “If you can.”

\---

He walks her to her door again, their hands still twined together and a tension that seems to take on its own physicality pressed between them.

He brushes his fingers, the ones not occupied with her own, through the loose strands of ink dark hair framing her face, and she leans into the gesture so his palm cups her cheek.

She kisses him on the palm, softly, and it goes unspoken that they both want something more but don't dare risk it on the night before his departure.

Steve manages two hours of sleep, dreaming of brown eyes and soft fingers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last time these two are gonna see each other for a bit. Prepare for some super srs SHIELD stuff and some phone related fluff.


	5. Five

The terrorist operatives launch their attack within twenty minutes of the team’s arrival on British soil and the whole operation timeline gets thrown out in favour of a mad dash to an underground metro station filled with a thick, pink, gas that sears the inside of Steve’s nostrils even through the rebreather strapped to his face.

Barton fires the countermeasure into a nearby vent, Romanoff manages to take down and restrain one of the agents, and Steve finds himself in pursuit the rest, running along the narrow strip of pathway between a tunnel wall and the subway tracks.

Still, they slip through his grasp and go to ground. Romanoff calls him back and insists that they question the one they've managed to capture before attempting to track down his fellows.

Steve makes it to the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility they're staying in around midnight and falls into bed with his armor still on, reaching blindly for his phone where he finds a single message waiting for him.

_17:17 (EST) from Edith Crow_

_“News seems to think you're in England. Hot or cold?”_

He smiles at the glow of his screen and types: _“On fire. News is quick these days.”_

He thinks of tapping the call button. It's only been a day but he finds himself craving the sound of her voice, missing the shape of her hand, and the way she manages to always have paint under her nails.

His phone flashes to a call screen without his fingers moving.

“Hey.”

“Hi. Sorry. I know it's late there. I should have asked-”

“I was gonna ask you so…”

They both laugh, Steve thinks she sounds a little tired, wonders if she’s waited up for him and finds he likes the idea.

“So, London?” She asks and he hums an affirmative “I only ever saw the airport on my way to tour.” she sighs, and sounds so close that if he closes his eyes he can imagine her speaking to him from somewhere in the quiet of his room. “Have you ever been? Not for work I mean.”

“A long time ago, and even then it was in the middle of a war.” He replies, “But working the USO was different. I got to see the city a bit.”

“Jealous.”

He laughs “It was boarded up and everything was rationed.”

He hears her yawn, the rumpling of fabric near the receiver, imagines her stretched out in bed beside him and feels his ears go pink.

“Still,” she murmurs “I've only ever been here and Montana. Plus a lot of army bases in the middle of deserts.”

“What's in Montana?”

“Family. I grew up there, this little nowhere reservation town near Billings. Kind of place where everyone knows everyone and has an opinion about ‘em.” She laughs, and it sounds so close. Steve reaches over to the lamp at his bedside and flicks it off, wanting to pretend…

“Do you still visit?”

“When I can.” she sighs, sounding wistful “after I joined up I became a bit of a pariah. My folks aren't exactly a fan of the government, or the military. When I came home after the IED they just kept saying ‘ _I told you so_ ’”

Steve thinks he can hear a little bit of pain behind her words, “I'm sorry,” he says “I can't imagine that's easy.”

She laughs again, a little wry “It is what it is. I was always a bit of a black sheep. Only person who ever seems to get it is my Grandad, but he fought in your war.”

“In Europe?”

“Pacific theatre, actually. He was Navy, even says he put his hand on the nuke that ended the war. Said he needed it to feel real, what they were doing to the people in Nagasaki.”

Steve remembers reading about the bombs, nuclear fire razing an entire city with a single blast and turning people to ash where they stood, leaving nothing but shadows and radiation enough to rip people's cells apart months and years later.

He thinks he would like Edith’s Grandad, another man who sees the human cost of war and not just terrible arithmetic, and he says as much.

She chuckles softly “Yeah, he'd probably like you too... “

It's quiet, the sound of fabric rustling on her end and the gentle current of air from the fan on his. He wants to reach out to her in the dark, pull her close, lace his fingers in her own.

“Is it weird to say I miss you?” she whispers, and he grins against his pillow.

“Only if it's weird to say I miss you too.”

\---

The next day Steve wakes to news that their captured agent managed to swallow a cyanide capsule at some point in the night, and his good mood turns to dust.

With the remaining terrorist agents in hiding and aware of S.H.I.E.L.D.s presence in London, and the risk of another attack preventing them from leaving, Steve resigns himself to the fact that they will likely be here for weeks.

At least, he thinks, he can actually look around the city without having to move through bombed out buildings. He finds a few days and tours Westminster Abbey, the Dungeons, Tower Bridge, and takes a ride on the London Eye.

He's not very good with his phone, and has to take a picture over and over again to get one he’s happy with, but with some help from Romanoff, _Natasha_ she insists, he figures it out well enough to send Edith a few.

She responds with her own photos of whatever she's doing at the time. A picture of a busker on the subway, dogs on the street, the weight rack at a gym, and an icy drink in a Starbucks cup loaded with whipped cream.

He doesn't get the chance to call her often with the hectic schedule. When he's not strategizing or speculating with the experts where the next attack might come, he’s doing reconnaissance on suspected terrorist operatives.

Two weeks later, another attack hits a local mall. They miss intercepting the operatives by under five minutes, but this time there's footage enough from a myriad of security cameras to get an idea where they've hidden themselves.

Another day later and Steve is kicking down a door to a South side warehouse. And they're taking a thin faced chemist into custody, scanning him for any hidden capsules of hydrogen cyanide before they can lose him like the last one.

The contents of the warehouse are confiscated; crates packed with grenades of gas and machinery used to produce the poison itself.

It feels like a victory. Steve knows they still have operatives to round up, but Natasha’s skills at interrogation are legendary, and he has no doubt they'll have a lead soon.

A better lead than waiting for another bomb to go off, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting a wee bit saucy in the next chapter. Not enough to raise the rating to Explicit but enough for me to be confident that it's getting there.
> 
> Edited for continuity errors on 01/06/18


	6. Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So uh, we got a little spice on this dish finally. 
> 
> But like, medium salsa. I'm saving the ghost peppers for later.

“I’m going to die waiting for this to decrypt.” Natasha sighs, spinning in the leather computer chair. Clint throws a potato chip at her and she catches it without looking, crunching on it and continuing her rotation. They’ve been doing this for the better part of an hour.

The scientist, Doctor Jean DuCondie, had given them everything he knew about Operation Wraith: a mission to raise concerns about terror threats in major Western cities and get the citizens to vote for political candidates who would increase surveillance programs. DuCondie, a cog in a larger machine, was one of three chemists responsible for the Wraith gas. He couldn't identify the other two, saying their research was delivered to him through encrypted messages using a proxy.

Natasha had shrugged and requisitioned the hard drive from DuCondie’s lab.

Steve is leaning back at his own desk, phone in hand, trying to think of a response to a text message he received an hour ago. A photo of Edith, hair plastered to her face in inky tendrils and clothes soaked so thoroughly with rainwater he can see the outline of her bra through her shirt.

A bra with, apparently, very little padding.

_18:48[EST] from Edith Crow_

_[Attached 1 Photo]_

_“So, how's the weather over there?”_

Steve takes one look and closes it immediately. He knows it's probably completely innocent, she probably didn't even notice, or she doesn't care. Men have them too, right?  Why should a woman's be any different? Steve figures that sort of thing might have changed in seventy odd years. Brave new world, after all.

Doesn't stop ninety five year old him from reddening like a lobster in a pot of boiling water though.

Clint notices, because he's Clint and he's made it his business to notice and point out every embarrassing thing Steve does. He pauses his chip throwing to scoot over on his own chair and smoothly rest his ankles on Steve’s borrowed desk.

“She text you something cute?”

Steve privately thinks nearly everything Edith texts him is cute, but he just gives Clint a long look.

“Better than cute?” he makes a face that would look scandalized if he wasn't grinning “And you haven't been struck by lightning or anything.”

“Don't you know it's mean to tease the elderly?” Natasha, deadpan, leans back in her chair and takes Clint’s chips straight out of his hands.

Clint _does_ look scandalized now, reaching to snatch the bag back and getting one of his hands smacked for his trouble.

“Guys.” Steve says, a slight pleading note in his voice.

“No, she's cute. I approve.” Natasha traps Clint’s hand with her own when he tries to go for the bag again, bending his fingers back until he yelps and pulls them away.

Steve shouldn't be surprised that Natasha looked Edith up, even with as few details as he's given to his teammates about her (under duress). A name, an age, that she's a veteran and an artist.

Clint pouts, massaging his assaulted hand. “I'm hurt that you didn't include me in Cyberstalking Cap’s girlfriend.”

“We've been on two dates!”

“You text constantly and talk on the phone at all hours.”

“Clint’s right. Also, here...” Natasha fiddles with her phone and both men’s terminals beep at the same time.

On the one hand Steve doesn't want to look. He would rather hear anything Natasha’s dug up about Edith from Edith herself but…

He's curious. Too curious for his own good. And the top two documents aren't even classified so...

 

 

_Personnel File 20/12/2010_

_First Lieutenant Edith Lone Crow_

_DOB: 23/01/1988_

_Status: ACTIVE DUTY_

_Aliases:_

_“Eight Day Edie” (see mission report 18/10/2010)_

_“Jackal” (Widespread, Call sign)_

_“Bear Grylls” (jokingly by unit)_

_Lt. Crow is highly skilled in survivalist techniques, hand to hand combat, and long range firearms. She is recommended for leading teams of five or less on objectives that require stealth or periods in hostile environments with low chance of resupply with a current mission success rate of 100% and only one casualty (see mission report 18/10/2010)._

_Lt. Crow’s psychological profile is within nominal range for a soldier with her experience. She has reported some difficulty sleeping and occasional bouts of depression since the death of Lt. Ramsay during her last tour but is well enough for active duty as of this document's date._

 

_Personnel File 18/08/2011_

_First Lieutenant Edith Lone Crow_

_DOB: 23/01/1988_

_Status: MEDICAL DISCHARGE_

_Aliases:_

_“Eight Day Edie” (see mission report 18/10/2010)_

_“Jackal” (Widespread)_

_Lt. Crow has been pulled from active duty due to injuries sustained as detailed in mission report 15/08/2011._

_Lt. Crow is recommended to serve in an advisory capacity only._

  


Steve brow furrows, scanning the two personnel notes. Five classified documents are attached, mission reports that he doesn’t read, but he does look at the few photos Natasha included alongside them.

There’s a formal portrait of Edith in a tailored dress uniform, another of her in civvies with her hair cropped short at a shooting range standing with a brilliant smile next to a perfect bullseye.

In one, wearing standard kit, she's smiling with a small group of other soldiers on a sandy picnic table, one man has his arm around her shoulders. He’s bald and square jawed with a five o clock shadow and dark skin, and he's wearing a Santa Claus hat. Steve realises after close inspection that Edith is sitting in the man’s lap, a man whose face she painted and hung at the gallery.

Steve swallows. Lt. Samuel Ramsay is smiling back at him from _“Stealth Team Alpha, Christmas, 2009”_ and Steve feels a well of something bitter and sore he hasn't felt since Howard Stark asked Peggy out for Fondue.

Even though Lt. Ramsay is two years dead…

And there was really no reason to assume he and Edith had been… _Fondueing_. Fraternising. Other words that start with “F” ing.

Natasha finishes decrypting the hard drive and sends the files to everyone who needs them, including Steve who can't quite concentrate and decides to look over his portion in the morning. He makes his apologies and returns to his room to stew.

It's been a long day, recovering data from DuCondie’s home, then travelling back to headquarters to decrypt it all. Then Clint and Natasha’s relentless teasing and the pile of documents (both mission relevant and otherwise) that he has yet to go through. He strips down to his briefs and falls into bed, burying his face in the pillow and groaning. Steve wants to pass out but he knows he won't sleep until he talks to Edith and figures some of this out.

When he picks up his phone and sees the photo again he resigns himself to the fact that he’s aroused by it, possibly despite Edith’s intentions. But Steve knows enough about his serum enhanced body now that if he tries to take care of it once it will just keep coming back until he's empty and exhausted. So he leaves his half-hard erection alone and types out a reply.

_22:20[EST] from You_

_“Weather is cloudy but no rain. Can't say I'm jealous. Can I call?”_

Steve rolls onto his back, turning off the light as he always does when they talk now. The dark makes her feel closer, like he can reach out and pull her to him if he wants to. He has a brief moment to consider that his current state is probably not the best time to think about her laying with him in the dark before his phone buzzes softly in his fingers.

_22:23[EST] from Edith Crow_

_“Isn't it supposed to always be raining in England? Call away.”_

Steve presses the dial symbol and hears the tone followed by a momentary clatter and an expletive.

“Hey, Steve, sorry.” she laughs “Just got home. Overestimated my ability to remove shoes and answer a phone at the same time.”

“Late night?”

“Mmm” she confirms, and he hears her sigh in pleasure in a way that goes straight to his-

“My boss had a bunch of last minute orders to send in and of course they give it to the part timer.” She sounds decidedly less pleased and more resigned, “How about you? Anything you can talk about?”

Several things, but Steve truthfully has no idea how to broach them. “Yeah. I think we might have things wrapped up here soon.” he says instead. “Still can't go into specifics but we have some good Intel. I'm looking forward to going home.”

“Consider me nonspecifically excited.” Edith chuckles. “I may or may not have been dress shopping this weekend.”

He thinks of her in that green number from their dinner, all gentle curves and sparkling eyes, her fingers mapping his hands as she told him she was enjoying his company.

Steve takes a deep breath.  The dark is letting his imagine fill in the blanks of what those fingers would feel like elsewhere and he thinks he's going to pop right out of his underwear.

“I'm looking forward to it…” he sounds a bit strangled, maybe.

The other end goes quiet for a moment, a sound of fabric and a thump followed by a soft curse.

“You okay?”

“Yeah just uh… Just took my leg off. The fake one. Obviously. Just feels really nice after a long day.” She huffs, “That probably sounds weird.”

“Not at all.” Steve can hear the self conscious note in her voice. It comes out whenever she talks about her prosthetic and he wishes he could reassure her. He thinks of resting his hand above her knee, over the seam where flesh meets hard plastic and stroking his way up...

He takes another breath. She trusts him and he has access to secrets about her. He needs to control himself right now.

“I had some stuff sent to me that wasn’t about the mission.”

She gives a curious “oh?”

Steve bites his lip “One of the agents looked you up, sent me a couple of personnel and mission reports. I read the personnel files. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have.”

She remains silent for a moment, and Steve waits. He holds his breath for her to be angry, to hang up on him.

“But not the mission reports?” He can’t read the inflection in her voice. He’s not sure he wants to.

“Not the mission reports.”

She sighs, the sound brushing against the receiver,“They’re nothing special but...  I’d rather you hear it from me? When you get back?”

“Yeah, of course.” Steve thinks he would want her to tell him anyway, to listen to her voice rather than read a soulless account of the things she’s been through.

“Thank you, Steve.” She says in an undertone.

“Whatever you need.”

Another pause.

“That’s a dangerous statement”

It’s said suggestively enough that he doubts the innocence of her earlier message and he feels a hopeful twitch stir between his legs. “Is it?”

She laughs, softly, he can hear the grin in her voice when she says “I got a lot of needs in my life the past couple of years.”

“She says to the ninety five year old who’s never…” He swallows. He’s pretty sure she knows.

“Ever? Not even-”

“Ever. Never got past kissing.”

She’s quiet for a moment, then he hears a squeak of bedsprings and a short huff of breath that sends a shiver of heat over him. “That probably shouldn’t make me more attracted to you.”

He’s going to need to take care of himself before he can sleep tonight. It's going to take hours and he can’t even find it in him to be mad at her about it. “Probably not. I’m not upset if it does, though.”

“Good” she chuckles, sounding a little huskier than usual “Something just kind of… I dunno? About showing you something new?”

Steve thinks he might die. There’s enough blood travelling southward at this point that he’s not sure how his brain is still functioning. “Yeah, I think I… I think I get it.”

At least one part of him does.

“I should get some sleep…” There's a low burr in Edith’s voice that suggests that she’d like to do something other than sleep. He recognises the out when he sees it though.

He wants it to be real. To find her in the warm darkness of his room and touch her, tangible and exploring and more than a voice over an electronic receiver.

“Yeah… I should too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phone sex is great and I will go to my grave defending it.


	7. Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been, what, a week? 
> 
> My birthday happened and my best friend surprised me by flying from Halifax to Ottawa to visit my antisocial butt, so I haven't really had time to log in and update between the hysterical laughing and junk food consumption.
> 
> Anyway, this one goes out to my sister from another mister. You'll probably be at home again by the time you read this, but know that I love you and promise I'll get on that Vegebul smut fic eventually.

Edith jolts to consciousness to a shrill sound slicing through her sleep addled brain. Her heart goes from resting to palpitating in moments and she rolls off the bed and into a crouch between the mattress and her end table with the matte black shape of her Beretta in hand and pointed at the door in under three seconds.

Tucked against the wall, she lets her eyes pan over the studio apartment, searching for the danger her body inists is there. It’s dimly lit from the rising sun perpendicular to her South facing window. The door is closed and locked, the deadbolt and chain still in place. The windows are intact, the bars she purchased locked in place from the inside over the glass she’s laminated to prevent shattering. The ceiling and floor and walls are all smooth and undamaged and she sees no other person in the square room or the open door of the bathroom or behind the removed doors of her closet.

Her bedframe is too low to the ground for someone to fit beneath it, but she checks anyway.

A few seconds pass and she recognises the sound through the surge of adrenaline. Her phone. A cookie cutter ringtone she’s never bothered to change. Edith takes another deep breath and takes her finger off the M9s trigger.

It takes another two breaths to lower it, and three more to replace it in the holster hanging over her headboard.

The phone stops ringing and she lifts herself out of the crouch, supporting herself on her one bare foot before turning and sitting heavily on her bed, hanging her head between her knees for a moment before the phone rings again.

She groans, reaching for it with clumsy fingers and looking at the screen with an irritated glower. The caller ID shows an image of her mother’s aged face, smiling with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of wine in the other from the last time Edith visited home. She thinks that the picture would be comforting to anyone else.

“Hey, Mama.” Edith’s voice is rough and dry from sleep, irritated from the adrenaline surge.

“I’m sorry to wake you.” Her mother sounds concerned, and tired, It must be four in the morning or so in Montana.

Edith has never known her mother to be anything less than unreasonably chipper, even at the asscrack of dawn.

“What’s wrong?”

There’s muffled speech in the background managing to reach the receiver on the opposite end of the call with a tinny reverberation that underlines the aging woman’s voice with something akin to a low grade panic. “Roy collapsed.” She says “Last night, we’re taking him to the hospital in Billings now.”

Edith swears viciously, but for once it goes without comment. Her grandfather is old, the reservation doesn’t have money to waste on him when they’re already having enough trouble paying to keep the infrastructure and utilities intact, and regardless of the prognosis there’s enough to complicate any treatment they try and give him.

What's more, what little he has to his name is likely to be fought over by the hoard of children and grandchildren and brothers and sisters and cousins and fuck knows who else that make up Edith’s family.

“I can be there by tonight.” She says, and reaches for her prosthetic, slipping a sock on over her stump from the pile of laundry she has yet to wash, and heads for the duffle bag hanging in her closet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, Y'see, the secret is to make em get all close and squishy and maybe think about humping and then you RIP THEM APART WITH ANGST. 
> 
> Comments are tokens you put in the machine so that it will eventually produce smut.


	8. Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter because WINTER IS COMING and It looked weird combining this with what's about to go down.

Steve is back in New York and handed another mission before he's done debrief from the last one. He's being transferred to Washington and has been assigned a new apartment and told to expect more information by the end of the week.

DuCondie’s encrypted information was able to provide S.H.I.E.L.D. with more Project Wraith targets and hints at other operations happening worldwide. Unfortunately for Steve that means he will be bouncing between missions for the next several months. 

And with Edith stuck in Montana…

She had sent him a message giving him the details: Her grandfather had a form of brain cancer that was too risky to treat at his age and he had been given an optimistic prognosis of six months. Edith had quit both her jobs in New York to care for him full time.

“We understand each other.” she had said, her voice rough with exhaustion and unspent grief “He didn't leave me when I lost my leg, I’m not leaving him while he's losing everything else.” 

So Steve sends flowers, and resigns himself to the possibility that it could be a while before he gets to see that new dress. 

They end up being so busy they barely have time to call each other, and the majority of the missions that follow Steve’s reassignment to D.C. require radio silence. Edith can't use her phone in certain parts of the hospital and phone service is terrible when she brings her grandfather home to the reservation so that he can be more comfortable in his final days.

There's a note of defeat in her voice when she says it. Then a pained mourning when her grandfather wakes up one afternoon and doesn't know her face.

Steve thinks of Peggy, disappearing by inches as her hours of lucidity become minutes and moments. Edith shares her stories about being raised by a man who doesn’t remember her anymore and he tells her about Peggy, about basic training in New Jersey, and about Bucky who believed in him before he ever picked up the shield. 

Bucky who Steve would have gladly given his life for, but who chose to give his instead. 

Edith understands something in him. She fills in a few blanks about Ramsay and tells him about a man who had been her best friend and who took a bullet following her into the desert. 

“We loved each other. Not romantically or anything, but we did decide that we wanted to get married eventually, if only to make sure we would always be posted to the same place.” She says as Steve lays in the dark of his Washington apartment. He wonders, privately, if he would have thought about Bucky differently if they hadn’t been born in a society that barely acknowledged the possibility of two men loving each other. 

When they hang up for the evening, Steve thinks maybe he could have, but Buck is long gone and even the people who he cares for who are still alive are out of his reach. For all the world has become more connected it just makes him feel even lonelier. 

The calls and messages become fewer, and fewer, and then on a frigid November morning they stop all together.


	9. Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so freaking sorry for the delay on this one folks. LARP season is upon me and I was off playing make believe with a bunch of other adults, and will be back to play a different make believe game with different adults at the end of June.
> 
> Anyway, Winter is upon us, and I wanna say we got about 5 more chapters before we bag this rabbit.

Shit hits the fan spectacularly in May.

Steve has been sent with Natasha and a S.T.R.I.K.E. team to rescue hostages being held on a covert S.H.I.E.L.D. vessel in international waters, but it doesn't take him long to figure out that the people he’s fighting aren't simple terrorists, and that Natasha is there to do something completely different than rescue hostages and grill him about his love life.

Or lack thereof.

A couple days later and Fury shows up in his apartment looking like hell and telling Steve not to trust anyone while the director bleeds out on the floor. Something about his assassin, a man Steve’s height with long, messy, black hair and an arm made of a metal strong enough to catch his shield, pings his memory in a way that Steve can’t place.

He knows in his bones that something has gone horribly wrong before the first punch from his supposed allies is even thrown his way, and he’s ready to run for the first time in his life when he steps into an elevator and has to put down his own colleagues.

\---

After the close call with Zola they realise they need to lay lower than they have been. There are eyes and ears following them everywhere and he hasn't felt this exposed since he was a kid. Even with Natasha on his side he can't shake the feeling of vulnerability and he makes his way to the closest person he knows they aren't watching.

Steve isn't expecting Sam to offer his pararescue skills, or his wingpack. He's not expecting him to follow it up with a suggestion that they pull someone else into the fight before they go after Sitwell either.

“We did some work together in the Registan” he says, “Jack had a reputation for taking on missions that killed anyone else.”

“Had?”

“She got out. Like me.” he shrugs “I think she’d want back in for this though.”

They pile into Sam’s car and drive from Washington to New York. Steve tries to press Sam for more information but he won't budge “Trust me on this one.”

If Natasha gleans anything from the conversation she's not budging either.

She does seem a little smug though, he thinks.

In Harlem, they park on the street outside a three story walk up that's more ivy than brick. With a handful of residence milling around outside with the lobby doors open. Steve can hear the ring of a fire alarm and something in his gut tells him that they’re not the only ones here for Sam’s friend. 

They take the stairs two at a time, all the way to the top floor where the door is kicked in with a body slumped across the threshold. There's a perfect nine millimeter hole through its head.

Sam kicks it over with a toe and the face is familiar to Natasha. A S.T.R.I.K.E. agent she's worked with once or twice. 

The apartment is small and spartan, a studio with a mattress on the floor, a desk, a table and a stack of sealed moving boxes against one wall. Steve can smell cigarettes and liquor from the precarious stack of empty bottles by the bed, and blood from the two bodies splayed across the ground. The first has another perfect headshot and the other has a jagged shard of green glass rammed through his throat from a beer bottle that lays shattered beside him. 

“She’s not here” Sam checks the bodies, taking a few of their guns and passing them around while Steve moves to the open window. It has a view of the road on either side of the building, and the connecting rooftops. Staring across the tarred expanse, he spots a retreating figure in a black hoodie and jeans, carrying a small backpack, and moving quickly away. 

“That her?”

Sam joins him and sighs “Yeah. That's her.”

Steve claps him on the shoulder and pushes himself out of the window, landing on the asphalt roof and sprinting after her. 

He gains quickly, and she must hear his approaching footsteps because she veers left and slides over the edge of the roof. When he catches sight of her again she’s tucked into a neat roll, unfurling and standing shakily on the fire escape below. She jumps the narrow gap to the ground, catching herself with a pained grunt and yanking herself up before pushing into a dead run that Steve knows he can outstrip shortly. 

He jumps across and down, closing the gap, and he tries to call out to her, but she doesn't slow. He realises he’s going to have to actually catch her if he wants to get her to speak to him, so he speeds up and manages to get within arms reach before she ducks under him and rolls to the side, grabbing his shoulder and pulling down hard while kicking his knees forward and locking his other arm painfully back.  He hits the cement hard and rolls, pinning her to the ground behind him.

“I just want to talk”

Her knee slams into his spine and her foot pushes him off her as she forces his elbow upwards, still locked. Steve is more flexible than he looks but it still hurts. 

More so when she presses forward in a threat to break his wrist. He doesn’t think she can, but he’s not about to underestimate her.

“Talk fast.”

The voice is dark, husky but feminine. It's familiar but his brain is occupied with the shooting agony licking up his arm and through his ribs.

“I need your help. SHIELD is compromised.” if she doesn't let go soon his arm is going to pop out of his socket, super soldier or not. “Sam Wilson sent me.”

“Falcon? Didn't think he was still in uniform.” she doesn't release his arm, but she moves it in such a way that some of the pain disappears, and Steve doesn't have to keep his head down any more. He sags a little in her grasp, and turns to try and get a look at the woman’s face, but she’s wearing a scarf over her nose and mouth and a pair of sunglasses that obscure the rest of her face and make her expression hard to read when she says his name slowly, disbelieving.

And then she does release him, letting his arm drop and pulling off the glasses to reveal dark brown eyes that are red-rimmed and tired, and then pulling the scarf down. She’s lost weight, her face looking hollow and her hair hanging longer and drier than he’s ever seen it, but it’s her all the same and he stumbles to his feet, “Edie?”

She takes the slow, half-step forward and thuds against his chest, slumping in relief or exhaustion against him and he can barely believe that this is real. She’s solid beneath his hands when he brings them up her back, and beneath the cloying smell of cigarettes and alcohol he can still catch the smell of something citrusy and warm. “I thought you stayed in Montana…”

She shakes her head, breathing a sigh against his sternum. “I couldn't handle it. It was too much after Grandad- I came back last month and then this.” She waves a thin fingered hand as if to encompass all of Harlem and Steve feels a pang of guilt.

“It’s my fault.” he realises, and holds her a little tighter. “They came after you because they knew I'd come here.” If Natasha knew about Edith and pulled her files then he shouldn’t be surprised that SHIELD would have put two and two together.

But that’s the wrong answer, apparently, because Edith sighs again and pulls away from him, “Don't be stupid, Steve, it doesn't look good on you.” She straightens and schooling her expression to something less desperate, grabs her backpack from where it slid during their scuffle. The feeling of loss is immediate for Steve, and he wants to reach out to her, to fix whatever this is that they've managed to break. “SHIELD contacted me the day I moved back to New York trying to hire me. They offered me a new leg and enough money that I'd never have to worry about my bills again.”

Steve furrows his brow. “And you turned them down?”

She snorts humorlessly “Yeah. I did. Obviously. More than my leg got messed up in Afghanistan.”

With Hydra in the driver's seat they would definitely clock any potential SHIELD agents who had turned them down and have them eliminated. At least if they thought those agents might be willing to help him or Natasha. 

Steve wants to reach for her again, to put himself between her and Hydra and SHIELD and anyone else who would come for her blood. But she's walking away from him now and he has to jog to catch up.

“We'll get you somewhere safe.”

“You came for my help.” She says, stepping into an alley with him close behind. “I can't help from a bunker. Just because I won't fight for SHIELD doesn't mean I won't fight to keep the world from exploding again.” 

He grabs her arm stopping her just as she's about to step out of the alley. “You said you didn't want back in, Edie, I don't wanna see you get hurt.” 

She laughs, but its short and without humour. “I'm already hurt. I'll deal with it.” she shrugs him off as Sam's car pulls up to the curb.

As she slides into the backseat Steve wishes, vaguely, that he had read those mission reports


	10. Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LARP season eats my brain. I've got two games I'm attending and one I'm running this month and July was a write off for doing anything in my spare time that wasn't prep. 
> 
> Anyway, here's two chapters as an apology? Offering? 
> 
> Comments are loved.

Edith guides them to an abandoned campground halfway between New York and Washington with the assertion that they need to bed down for an evening and plan how they’re going to snag Sitwell.

Steve doesn’t like it, but he sees how tired everyone is and knows that going after someone who is likely heavily guarded in the middle of the night will probably get them killed.

She leads them all to a short cabin backed against the overgrowth. The windows and doors are all intact and most of the furniture has been covered in plastic sheets that have gone gray with dust. There’s a distinct smell of mildew and Steve thinks there might be a nest of raccoons in the rafters but finds he’s too tired to really care.

Edith goes to get water from the creek, and has Sam collect wood to stoke a fire in the brick fireplace that sits against one wall of the main living space. Natasha is sorting MREs from Edith’s bug out bag and Steve…

Steve isn’t sure what to do with himself.

He steps outside and decides to walk the perimeter, itching to feel productive amidst the churning anxiety in his gut. They’ve been on the run for days and he hasn’t had a chance to process any of it, S.H.I.E.L.D. being compromised, Fury’s death, Natasha’s willingness to be unquestionably on his side, Sam’s generosity, Zola’s algorithm, seeing Edith again, and the strange familiarity of the Winter Soldier. All of it seems to coalesce into a tangle he needs to pick apart, but keeps snagging between his ribs.

Fury had said not to trust anybody, and who can he trust, really, when the rules of the game have become so unclear? Natasha has always been an enigma, but she's put her life on the line for him. Sam he's known for only a few months, but the man as stuck his neck out even though he didn't have to. Edith… well...

He walks past a small row of cabins in varying state of disrepair, and comes to a short jetty that sticks out into the creek. Edith is sitting at the edge of it with her leg in the water, hunched over something in her lap in silence. She’s wreathed in sunlight, silhouetted by the glinting water and looking like something out of an impressionist’s gallery.

Steve considers leaving her be. She seems preoccupied and had looked exhausted while they were in the car, slouching in her hoodie and speaking only enough to get them to the camp. The look in her eyes had been so resigned, like she had known this would happen.

He purposely snaps a few twigs under his shoes as he walks toward her, clunking heavily across the wooden planks of the dock to make sure she knows he’s there.

“Mind if I take a load off?”

She turns her head slightly to look at him and shimmies over. He can see now that it’s her prosthetic that she has sitting in her lap, and her pant legs are rolled up high so she can rest the damaged end of her left leg and the complete end of the right in the gently moving water.

In the dying daylight he can even see the burns that lick their way up the outside of her thigh, healed into silvery pink and slightly warped scars that look like the branches of an old tree and have wrapped around the remainder of her leg as far up as he can see before disappearing into her jeans. Its strangely beautiful, if a bit macabre.

He removes his shoes and socks, and hikes his own jeans up. As soon as his own feet touch the water its ice cold and he jumps, pulling his feet back up before easing them in more slowly.

“Sorry.” she says, quietly amidst the sound of peeping frogs and trilling crickets “Should have said something.”

“How are you not freezing?”

She shrugs “limited sensation in the stump and some fried nerve endings in the other leg.” she lifts the intact limb from the water and Steve can see the map of similar burn scars that wrap around her ankle and calf. “The cold helps with the swelling, It hurts to run with this thing y’know?”

Steve knows she would have been running a lot longer if he hadn't caught up with her, despite the mildly accusatory tone in her voice, but he says nothing. Instead he stares across the water at the silhouetted treeline and tries to collect himself enough to actually talk to her.

“I'm sorry I didn't tell you I moved back.” she says, still quiet and stirring the water gently with her leg, “I fell into a hole and didn't want you to see me like this.”

Steve frowns, looking at her wan face under the hood and the delicate bones of her fingers as they trace swirling, invisible, patterns over the polyurethane of her prosthetic leg.

“I wish I could have been there to help.”

She shakes her head, her mouth narrowing. “Nothing you could have done. He was ninety and the cancer was stage four when they found it. He couldn't remember his own name by the end…”

“Not what I meant. I'm still sorry though.” He wants to take one of her hands between his own, or better yet pull her against him and offer whatever comfort he can, but he has no clue what to expect or where they stand when Edith seems so distant and different to him.

She’s right next to him, but he feels like she’s on the other side of the creek, watching.

“So what did Falcon tell you?”

Steve almost laughs “That you can take a suicide mission and come out alive.”

She hums in her throat, “And?”

“To trust him that you would help us out. He was intentionally vague.” Steve had pestered him for more information but he sees now that something about Edith had made Sam keep whatever he knew to himself. Loyalty or respect or both, Steve doesn't doubt that Edith has somehow earned it from her fellow soldier.

“And you still haven't read my mission reports?”

“I told you I'd wait.”

“People tell me things all the time, they don't always mean what they say.”

Steve furrows his brow, looking at her taciturn profile and wondering how she's become so bitter. “I do.”

She finally turns to meet his gaze with a red rimmed stare that takes him by surprise. She's been crying, and recently. “Then I suppose you have a few questions.”

He does, but more so he has the urge to run his fingers through her hair and make her feel safe. Unfortunately those two things might not currently be mutually exclusive.

“Sam called you Jack?”

“Jackal. Yeah. It was my call sign, or, is my call sign.” She returns her gaze to the water but Steve keeps his on her face.

“And you met on tour?”

“Registan desert, two thousand ten. He was assigned to the pararescue squad that dragged me out of there half dead and alone after eight days.” She says it with no expression in her voice, but he can see the tension in her jaw when she speaks “That was the same mission that killed Ramsay. He took a bullet through the lung and it turned into a sucking wound before I could do anything about it.”

“Eight Day Edie.” Steve says, remembering the personnel file.

She nods “Yeah. I'm sure one of those mission reports covered it, but I survived on half a canteen of stale water and a couple of unlucky bugs. I dug a hole in the sand and put a tarp over me to keep the sun off.”

“Why would they send you out in the middle of the desert anyway?”

She grumbles,“Taliban compound with a satellite connection and a big heat signature. Bosses thought it was nukes but it was a server room running a program to hack into government I.P.s and spoof them.”

“I'll admit to understanding about half of that.”

The corners of Edith’s mouth turn up a little, “Terrorist computers stealing information from government computers so that they can disguise themselves and cause trouble.” She rephrases, and Steve “Ahh”s.

“Most of the reports are similar. There's a hostile in a remote location making things difficult in a way that the army can't solve by dropping a missile on it or risking a ground assault so they send me and maybe three or four other people to get information and ruin whatever they're working on even though it's crawling with enemy forces and will probably kill us.”

It's such a familiar situation. Steve's been in her exact position but with the benefit of a scientifically amplified body and a vibranium shield. It hurt like hell for him too, the SSR’s missions were always anything but low risk and if Steve’s body could scar he’d have enough of them to prove it.

“You can say no to this one.” He says softly, “I wouldn't blame you.”

She sighs, and pulls her legs from the water, tugging on a white stocking over her damaged limb and replacing the prosthetic. She stands slowly, and turns to face him, offering a hand.

“You're sweet to say so.”

He takes her hand and she tugs him up, but doesn't let go even when he's standing and close enough that half a step would have them pressed together.

“I'm being honest.” He says, swallowing a sudden flutter beneath his sternum.

She smiles then, just a hint of teeth, but it reaches her eyes and makes her look so much softer, reminds him of the last time he saw her happy and far away from the mess that seems to follow him everywhere.

“I know.”


	11. Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update #2!
> 
> We're getting pretty close to the end of this thing and I'm gonna try and power through the next few chapters before I inevitably get distracted by LARP stuff again.

 

Edith spends the two hours of her watch trying to center herself. Slow breaths and concentrating on the sounds of the woods around her and distinguishing each one as her eyes follow the pale shape of the dirt paths around the cabin.

So she can hear Sam get up for his shift with a low groan, and the quiet footsteps as he laces up his shoes and grabs one of the crinkling MRE packages on his way out to the veranda.

“Its pitch black out here, how can you see anything?”

She huffs a laugh “Your eyes will adjust. If my nearsighted garbage vision can figure it out then so can yours.”

He feels around the deck and slowly lowers himself to sit next to her, blinking in the darkness. “You're a mess, Jack”

“Thanks.” She takes a sip from her canteen. Sam doesn't know the half of it. If she had some paper and a pencil she could probably illustrate it for him but she hasn't touched either in a couple months and is almost afraid to at this point.

Sam sighs, leaning back on his elbows “I know you don't want to hear this, but you should come to group.”

She gives a wry “sure” and stands, spine cracking as she straightens and heads back into the cabin. If she can lock down for hours of sleep she'll be alright.

She steps into the smaller bedroom to discover Natasha already curled in the center of the cabin’s only twin bed and curses softly. Figures she'd end up on another team of nosy, interfering, busybodies. Edith briefly debates spending the night on the dusty, ripped apart couch, but doesn’t want to risk her four hours of sleep being interrupted by every little sound from the front room.

Steve is a large lump under the covers in the other room, facing away from the door and breathing slowly. He’s stripped down to a fitted, white, tank top and she honestly can’t help but trace the shape of his arms outlined in the dim lamplight with her eyes.

She manages to look away and shrugs off her hoodie as she sits on the end of the bed, loosening her prosthetic and setting it on the floor alongside the sock. She’s still sore from her impromptu track and field session today, the skin tender around where the plastic wraps her thigh and the muscles are aching all the way up to her hip. She knows she’s bruised where one of the S.T.R.I.K.E. assailants had caught her in the ribs with the butt of his gun, and her hand stings from where she had grasped the spout of a broken beer bottle to drive into his throat.

The image had seared itself into her brain, the man with green eyes and freckles wearing a black uniform and choking on glass and blood underneath her. She spent hours in the car and on the dock trying to reason that he would have killed her, that she had killed people before, and in worse ways.

The bed moves, Steve rolling over in his sleep, mumbling softly. She runs a hand through her hair and breathes out hard through her nose. This is just another thing she needs to take some time to think about.

Steve was way, _way_ , too good for her even before she fell face first into a bottle. Anyone else would have read those mission reports as soon as they had them at hand but he had wanted to wait for her. Anyone else would have taken one look at her baggage and run in the other direction. He was so patient, so unfailingly understanding, and like Sam had said: she was a mess.

Not just physically, with the missing leg and scars and bruises and patchwork of surgeries that marked her years and failures like a roadmap. Those were bad enough, but the mental stuff was astounding. Night terrors and panic attacks and the memories bubbling up around her like bloody seafoam after a storm.

He could and should do better.

But tonight he had still looked at her with those soft blue eyes and she could see that unspoken yearning that she felt in herself reflected back.

Fuck.

She swings her legs up onto the bed and lays back, staring at the ceiling for a moment before bringing her hands up to cover her eyes and press until she sees sparks instead of blood splatter.

“You okay?”

Steve’s voice, quiet in the dark and closer than it ever has been, interrupts her brooding and she turns her head to him.

His hair is a mess, his eyes bleary with sleep beneath the fan of his eyelashes, and fuck if she doesn’t find him so goddamn beautiful in that moment that her heart thrashes in her chest like a trapped rat.

“Tired.” She says, honestly, “Sore.” She adds.

“M’sorry.”

She shakes her head, feeling a gentle smile creep up on her. “It’s my fault for running. Go back to sleep, Steve.”

He makes a drowsy noise, pressing his face against the lumpy pillow “You gonna stay?”

She nods.

“Good.” He mumbles, and throws a heavy arm over her middle. “Missed you.”

And he’s asleep again.

“I missed you too, Steve.”


	12. Twelve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh, look, porn!
> 
> Again, life delays me. The story is pretty much finished at this point though, and I'm going to try and have things up in the next week or so.

He wakes up curled around something soft and warm, and he’s briefly disoriented before he registers the slow exhale against his arm and the weight of a leg on top of his own.

The barely-there light filtering in from outside is freckling her tan skin through the trees beyond the window, making her hair glow golden where it fans out over the pillow. She looks so soft and relaxed in comparison to yesterday, the furrow in her brow smoothed away and her mouth slightly parted where it had been frowning. She’s pillowed on his bicep with her hands resting between them, Steve’s other arm draped over her waist.

He knows this is going to be a problem when his morning wood makes its presence known. If she wakes up before he manages to disentangle their bodies he knows with absolute certainty that she'll notice the bulge currently pressed against her thigh. 

He lifts his arm from her waist, and her breathing shifts, slow and even to held and silent. He looks to her face, and her eyes are open and alert like she had never closed them to begin with. 

She takes a breath, finally, and her eyes lose the trace of fear and close again. “It's morning?”

“First thing.” he says quietly, and she nods. “Nat never got me for my watch.”

“Mmmm” Edith grumbles softly after a moment. “Methinks we've been set up.”

Steve is neither surprised or particularly upset about his teammates meddling right now.  Other than Insight, the dull ache between his shoulders, and the insistent press of his erection he would be happy to wrap himself back around her and sleep another eight hours. He's certainly dreamed about holding her like this enough.

If Edith’s noticed the hard on, or that his hand has returned to the dip of her waist, or that her shirt is hiked up to her ribs and said hand is actually touching  _ so damn warm oh my god  _ bare skin she's not saying anything about it. She's just looking up at him with a kind of expression he hasn't seen since that moment on her doorstep before he was dragged away to London.

They're so close, a breath between them, and Steve feels himself move forward to close the gap.

It's as chaste as he can make it, just a gentle press of lips to give her a chance to say no, to push him away. Instead, her eyes flutter closed and she presses her hands to his chest, dragging up to his shoulders as she sighs contentedly. Some instinct pushes him forward, a soft pass of his tongue over her lower lip and she opens for him like a well read book, tasting like a cool drink of water on a hot day while one of his hands tangles in her hair, the other sliding down to her waist, her thigh, and pulling it higher over his hip to lock them closer together. She groans his name against his mouth and her hands are gripping his shirt so hard he thinks it might tear. 

They come up for air, a patina of rose across her nose and cheeks just barely visible in the dappled light of their borrowed room. He's aching, harder than he's ever been and pressed against her leg but she doesn't seem remotely opposed when her own hips roll against his. She pulls him back to her with a low, desperate, noise that makes him want to press her into the dirt-hard mattress and pull every one of those sounds from her lungs.

Steve rolls them so she's on her back, never losing contact and he slides his fingers under her shirt again, higher, and grazing the band of her bra. Edith’s skin is soft where he doesn't find it scarred, stretched a little thin over her ribs when she arches her back to press against him. She feels almost fragile in his arms.

She reaches for the hem of his own shirt, bitten nails and the pads of her fingers smoothing over his stomach and up to his chest with a groan of approval. She bites his lower lip and huffs “Off” against his mouth, and he attempts to obey without separating himself from the heat of her.

He ends up stuck with the thing around his shoulders, making her laugh when he has to give up and pull the damned thing over his head with a curse. Still, she stares at him, pupils blown and face flushed, biting her own lip now. She runs her palms over his shoulders, down his chest, hungry and exploratory. “Christ, you're gorgeous.” she breathes, and he kisses her again, slower.

He thinks he could do this for hours, days. He can't get enough of the heat of her skin, the slide of her lips against his own. He wants more, though, and he kisses down to her neck, over her pulse where it's hammering beneath her jaw, and soon her shirt joins his on the dusty floor. Amber skin is bared to his touch, silvery pink where old injuries have healed poorly. One such scar, the one he had touched earlier, travels north from the base of her ribs and disappears beneath the black cotton of her bra. He traces it again, kissing it and reveling in the hitch of her breath. He thinks this must be what it's like to be drunk with power, super strength may not have corrupted him, but the noises she makes when he touches her just might.

And when she moans “please” he thinks he might ruin his jeans. 

Instead, he pulls the bra up and over her head, not bothering with the clasp, and laves his tongue over the flushed peak, thumb caressing the opposite. He had never been the type to stare at breasts but he thinks that might change. Edith’s are soft, round, and perfect beneath his fingers and she shivers, hands gripping his shoulder blades hard enough to ache, pelvis grinding against his thigh. Steve gets the message, fingers leaving the soft swell of her breast and nearly breaking the button on her tac pants when he pushes it through the loop. He  _ growls _ , actually goddamn growls, when the zipper jams.

“I got it.” she breathes, wiggling her hips until the fabric slides down. He takes the opportunity to squeeze out of his own jeans and soon they're kissing again and Edith’s leg is wrapped around him tight enough to grind them together through the barely-there barrier of their undergarments. 

Steve feels like he's burning, starving, and drowning all at once. His cock is leaking and straining with every slow rock of his hips against the slick line of her core, every low groan against his mouth. He wants more,  _ needs _ it, but he knows he'll last all of a half-second before he pops harder than a champagne cork.

He's not expecting her to reach into his briefs and wrap a calloused hand around his cock, or for her to grin against his mouth when he gasps and bucks involuntarily, balls tightening dangerously. 

A couple quick pumps of her hand and he's filling her palm with cum and groaning against the shell of her ear. 

“‘m’sorry.”

She hushes him, fingers on her opposite hand massaging his scalp as he shivers, blushing, and growing hard again in her now-slippery hand. “I'm not.” she whispers.

She uses her foot to pull his underwear down over his ass, and he manages to get it the rest of the way with a free hand and some very unsexy wiggling. Still, Edith smiles and kisses him, lets him trace the elastic waistband of her briefs until he's brave enough to pull them down and away. 

He's never seen a naked woman in person before, and he understands, now, why so many painters chose this as their subject. She's lithe and bronze skinned, lighter where the sun hasn't has opportunity to burnish her deeper, and blushed a rosy pink beneath a sparse patch of dark brown curls. A smattering of scars, old and new, criss cross her body like the lines on a star map, and Steve thinks he might try and paint her like this, if they live through the next twenty four hours.

He touches her, stroking the soft skin of her thigh and tracing up to the wetness between. 

She breathes a sigh, and he lets a finger push in, feeling a foreign tightness and obscene heat that makes his length jump with envy.

“God damn.” he forgives himself the curse. This is worth it.

She laughs, pulling him down to her and aligning his cock up with where his fingers are still exploring. She's kissing him again when he replaces the tip of his index with the painfully swollen head. 

He thrusts in slowly, moaning loud enough to alert their cabin mates to what their doing, but he doesn't care. Edith is breathing hard beneath him, stretched and pulsing around him like a second heartbeat, and when instinct takes over and his hips stutter against hers she makes a raw, strangled noise that matches his own.

It doesn't take long before he's burying his face in her shoulder and trying not to lose himself again. Her thighs squeeze around his waist in a vice grip and her back arches and he gently presses the spot just above where he's filling her. 

He watches her face, red and open mouthed when she unravels beneath him, once, twice.

And just like that, he explodes.

Hot static burns through his brain and he thinks he must blackout for a moment because the next thing Steve remembers is being kissed gently and having his hair played with by a very sleepy,  satisfied, looking Edith. 

They doze, tangled together and warm with her head tucked against his neck and Steve curled around her and letting his fingers trail up and down her spine. 

“We’ll have to get up soon.” 

Edith sighs against his clavicle, pressing her body closer. “Yeah.” Steve strokes a hand over her hair, kissing the top of her head. “Not yet, though.”


	13. Thirteen

It feels good, at first, like stretching an unused muscle, She’s not as fast as she was, but no less accurate when she aims the stolen sniper rifle at Sitwell’s tie and follows him with her scope until they've secured him in the back seat of Sam’s sedan. She Follows him again with her eyes as the Winter Soldier rips him out of the car from beside her, and when he’s thrown into oncoming traffic like so much roadkill.

Edith’s hands don't shake when the car is rammed into and rolled over, her breath is steady and even when she dives behind an overturned hatchback, and when Steve is blown off the overpass by a goddamn rocket launcher she doesn't even feel her heart change tempo despite the worry and anger that bubbles up inside her like a steaming caldera. 

She just takes aim, sends six perfect shots through six Kevlar-coated bodies, and exhales. 

Its brutal, and fast, and while Natasha and Steve take on the Winter Soldier themselves, Edith and Sam keep the STRIKE thugs too busy to interrupt. 

It's all a hyper focused series of gunshots and blood splatter until she feels something explode beneath her and she falls to the ground in a sudden blur of deja-vu. She reaches for her leg, and finds the polyurethane shattered and the metal core blackened, bent and twisted. There's a distant sort of pain there, a prickling ache that feels dead and dreamlike, Edith can't quite decide which, but her muscles are screaming and telling her to get up, to move. It’s been so long since she’s seen real combat, but her instincts haven’t atrophied or dulled; so when a STRIKE agent grabs one of her arms, goes to drag her forward, she lunges with her combat knife, jamming in under his jaw between his mandible and the soft column of his throat. She fails to escape the spurt of blood from his opened artery, and it coats her arms and chest in hot scarlet as she rolls away and lets the body drop beside her.

Edith holds her breath, lungs filling with the metallic scent of blood, and waits. She hears the commotion as they dogpile Sam and force him bodily into the back of a van, then footsteps in her direction once the door has been slammed shut.

She lets her eyes glaze over and stops breathing completely as they close in. She can hold her breath for maybe four minutes, five if she hadn't started smoking again. Fucking cancer sticks.

The men come into view, staring at her unmoving form and she hears one say she's dead. Another appears, indistinguishable through the blur of her focus, and says something in Russian before he aims a pistol at her head.

Edith moves before he can fire, reaching up and twisting his arm so the shot misses her head by more than a foot, but the sound deafens her, makes her ears ring around the muffled static of sounds surrounding them. She leaps with her intact leg and smashes the but of her knife into his jaw hard enough that it should crack, but it doesn't. 

Her eyes find their focus and she realises why.

He's bloody, and the mask is gone, but despite being obviously injured he manages to grab her by the throat with his metal hand and deflects her next strike with the knife. 

Edith thrashes, catches him across the stomach with the ragged edge of her broken prosthetic and hears him grunt in pain. He grabs the metal core and yanks it to the side, ripping the remains from her leg and tossing it away. Her vision swims as his grip tightens, and sound becomes muffled. She hears someone speak, then repeat themselves, and again, before she's dropped heavily onto the pavement with a harsh gasp that scrapes the inside of her lungs and the back of her throat like sandpaper.

The Winter Soldier steps on her wrist, pulls the blade free, and then kicks aside her only remaining pistol before hauling her over his shoulder like a bag of dirty laundry. The lack of oxygen makes her sluggish, she tries to knee him where she stabbed, to smash her elbow into the back of his head, but she's still wheezing for air and the new angle and ringing in her ears are making her dizzy. Everything is spinning around her and her chest is burning and trying to suck in oxygen around the unforgiving metal of his shoulder where it’s jammed beneath her ribs with each heavy step.  

She feels the jostle of vehicle suspension and sees the dark inside of an armored van through her swimming vision. He lays Edith ungently down on a bench of metal bars, and cuffs her arms, first behind her at the elbow, and then to the bars themselves. It’s efficient, and shit for a prisoners circulation, but she suspects that doesn’t matter to him either way. He tugs on the chain, as if to test it’s integrity, and then takes a seat on the opposite bench, face blank and impassive as he looks at her. 

The van’s rear door is slid shut.

And that's when her breath starts to shake.

She remains silent, trying to slow her gulps of air and steady her trembling exhalations. The metal of the bench is cold against her overheating skin and she tries to focus on the way it feels against her cheek and brow instead of the rumbling of the engine as the van begins to move.

“He knew me.” 

She takes another slow breath, not sure that she heard him speak at first through the static of what might be a ruptured eardrum. She swallows, opens her eyes without remembering she had closed them, and stares at him. 

“The target” he tries to clarify, staring at her with a vicious intensity that makes her feel like she's being disected, “He called me Bucky.”

Edith tries to focus, her vision swimming and doubling as she takes a closer look at her captor.

She's seen his picture, his face, in a textbook and in a museum. Square jawed and straight nosed with deep set eyes and a dimple at the base of his chin, a small scar under his right eye. His hair is longer, his face worn with something undefineable, but…

“You're Sergeant Bucky Barnes.” she manages with a wheeze, god her throat hurts. Her everything hurts. “Steve… he's your friend, or was.” 

Bucky’s brow furrows, and he looks at her like he might try and crack her open, looks at her face, her leg, and his expression changes again to something…

She's not sure, but he leans back against the side of the van and takes an audible breath through his nose in what she can only imagine is some expression of an emotion in a life otherwise void of it. 

Edith passes out before he asks anything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've never experienced just how loud a gunshot is, just know that it is really goddamn loud and absolutely will pop your eardrums if its close enough to your face parts, even with a silencer (which doesn't do so much "silencing" and really does more "making this sound less like fireworks-ing")


	14. Fourteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here's the deal. I had finished Chiaroscuro m o n t h s ago and was gonna post it all up... and then I decided I hated it.
> 
> So this is the beginning of the re-vamped ending.
> 
> TW for torture n' stuff.

The soldier is ordered to stand in a darkened corner of the room, told to await instruction and not move until then. Compliance is easy, reflexive. 

There is an unconscious woman strapped to a metal hospital bed wearing a loose tank top and underwear. Early to mid thirties, five foot four inches, olive skinned with long, nearly black hair. She is covered in blood and missing her right leg above the knee. It’s an old wound, several years healed, at least. The soldier can see the burns and scarring wrapping around it and the inside of her intact leg. The result of some kind of explosive, he suspects. 

He can also see the newer injuries: green and purple bruising up the side of her ribs, around her wrist and the side of her face, wrapped around her throat in the shape of a hand. Newer cuts bleed sluggishly all over her body, some having been stitched closed recently to prevent her from bleeding out. She is to be interrogated, from what the soldier can tell, though he isn’t sure why, and is unable to hazard a guess with any accuracy so soon after being woken.

He vaguely remembers a fight, the blur of faces and one in specific that he can’t piece together in his mind’s eye. It brings to mind trains, and dancing, and a feeling he doesn’t understand.

The other two men in the room with him are a doctor who has been in the room since the Soldier came to consciousness, and Alexander Pierce. The doctor has a cart laid out near the bed covered in surgical tools and a row of syringes. Syringes filled with various liquids that seem familiar and inexplicably dangerous despite the Soldier’s lack of knowledge as to their contents. 

“Whenever you’re ready, Sir.” The doctor says, selecting one and placing the needle to the subtle rise of the woman’s jugular vein where it snakes up the side of her neck. At a nod from Pierce, he injects the liquid, removes the needle, and replaces it in perfect symmetry with the others atop the table.

The Soldier observes the woman, jerking awake against the restraints. She makes no sound, but her brown eyes scan what areas of the room are visible to her. Her muscles flex against her restraints experimentally. He watches her take stock of her situation over the course of a few seconds and can see the moment she realises what’s about to happen. Her jaw tenses, her fists curl, and her breathing slows.

She's done this before.

“First Lieutenant Edith Crow.” Pierce says, opening a file folder and flipping through a few pages within. “Joined the army at eighteen, got recommended to the marines at twenty and assigned to Force Recon at twenty one where you participated in enough classified ops over the course of a decade to make S.H.I.E.L.D look like we were dragging our heels.” He throws the folder to the side in emphasis. 

Her voice, when she speaks, is a wheeze. Her throat has been damaged by the same hand that left fingerprints around it and she seems to wince with every word. “It would, if you were actually S.H.I.E.L.D, wouldn't it?”

“We’re the only S.H.I.E.L.D that matters, Lieutenant.” Pierce doesn't miss a beat, “So, being a corresponding branch of our government's military, you can tell me what you know about Wraith.”

The soldier thinks she laughs, but it comes out as a sort of scratchy cough. “It was your op. You'd know more than me.” another slow wheeze, “But I suppose one head never knows what the other is doing.” 

Pierce sighs, leans back in his chair, crossing his ankle over his knee and pressing his fingers into a steeple. “Lieutenant Crow, I would really rather not have to ask Doctor Caine here to inject you with anything on this table. I've been told the venom he’s synthesized is extremely painful.”

The Soldier recognizes the liquids now: Chemically identical duplicates of everything from the venom in a bee sting to a bullet ant bite as well as several vials of epinephrine. They've been used on him, he thinks, to dull his pain response over time. 

He doesn't think Pierce will take his time with the Lieutenant. 

When she doesn't respond, the doctor reaches for the first syringe on the table, and injects her with an economy of movement born from experience. It takes only moments before her muscles tense, just barely enough to show that she feels it. The Lieutenant isn't a stone though, and she hisses through the next injection. 

“So, here's what I don't understand.” she says, finally, once the third syringe of venom has been administered, “You guys saw all the bullshit that the Nazis did back in the forties and decided ‘Let's do that, but bigger.’?” she's sweating now, and her face is turning red in a flush that creeps down her neck and chest, her toes curling as she breathes slowly, heavily. 

“We want order. Governments need to be able to control their people.” Pierce says over steepled fingers. 

“Genocide isn't very orderly.”

“Project Wraith, Lieutenant.”

She laughs, then, strained and rasping as she tries to jerk away from the Doctor's syringe. “Fucking. Fuck. Shit!” 

“The next dose is worse. You know how to stop it.”

“Fuck you!” she strains against the metal and the Soldier can see tears gathering, shiny against dark eyelashes. When the doctor picks up the next needle she lets out a screech of frustration, “No! Fuck! No! Jesus, stop!” 

The room is silent and the doctor doesn't bring the syringe to her arm. Her flesh is red, blotchy, and her fingers are white from being clamped into fists. She's shaking, just enough that the Soldier can hear the tremor in her exhalations.

She is afraid.

The Soldier does not blame her.

“Wraith was part of a program-” she begins, waits for the doctor to replace the syringe on the cart, perfectly parallel with the others. “Wraith was a program picked up by a religious extremist group called ‘Rapture Now’. They wanted to use it to kill as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, so that God could pass judgement quicker, I guess.”

“When I was still in Force Recon, I was sent on an op to destroy the lab they were using, but they had other research. Stuff way ahead of modern genetic engineering. They could use the Wraith system to make people immune to anything. Cancer, AIDS, the goddamn common cold!”

“So I took a sample before I set the whole place on fire. Barely got out. Got the sample to Kandahar, and that was it.”

Pierce looks at the Lieutenant for a long moment, and turns his head imperceptibly to be able to see the Soldier out of the corner of his eye.

The Soldier knows she's holding back, her eyes are purposefully wide and her expression is schooled in something like resigned sadness. She doesn't look broken, he's seen broken, knows it with the intimacy of a craftsman at his worktable. This woman is a skilled counterfeiter, and he doesn't doubt that at least some of what she has said is true, but she knows more.

The Soldier hesitates to give Pierce the signal that would reveal her, long enough that a voice over the intercom summons him away, and he orders the Soldier to take his position on the helicarrier and prepare for launch.

The Lieutenant spots the Soldier as he steps toward the door, and for the briefest moment her tired brown eyes meet his own.

 

He feels something begin to shift.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At some point I'm gonna go back through this whole thing and do some serious pruning. BUT NOT THIS DAY.


	15. Fifteen

Steve knows before Sam says anything that Edith is dead. 

Sam is pushed into the armored cargo van next to him and Natasha, and the doors are slammed shut and the van starts moving without Edith. Either she's escaped, or she's dead, and it only takes one look at Sam's stone-silent face to figure out which.

Later, he tells Steve that she went down fighting the Winter Soldier, managing to even hurt the bastard pretty seriously even with his hand around her throat and her leg blown apart. 

But Steve thinks back to the night before, on the dock with his feet in the water next to hers and wishing he knew what to say. She had been afraid, but resigned in her fear, exhausted by it. 

“You can sit this one out.” He had said. And she had smiled at him like he was talking nonsense.

To the end of the line. Like Bucky. Except Bucky was alive, buried inside Hydra's monster. A monster that had killed her.

Bucky's loss shouldn't hurt just as keenly as Edith’s, but it does, and Steve has to push that down too. Down, down, into the box where he keeps every emotional liability he can't risk feeling when he's about to go to war for the sake of billions. When he may have to kill a man wearing his best friend's face, who in turn killed the woman Steve had felt… something for.

Natasha calls him to join them in the final brief before they attack the Triskellion, her voice carefully emotionless, and he shoves the box closed, locking it. 

No, he knows exactly how he felt about Edith, and Peggy, and -God help him- how he felt about Bucky. 

But as usual, Steve Rogers is on the wrong side of time.

\---

Edith is able to ascertain a few things upon waking up for the second time:

First, her throat is burning and tender and talking is going to be a real bitch for a while. She's also pretty sure one of her ribs is broken and that her left eardrum has been damaged in some way. The echoing sounds of distant footsteps and voices sound like they're coming from an old tube television. Her nerves still tingle and her muscles ache from her interrogation, but she suspects they've flushed her system of the toxins while she was unconscious, or else it has been a very long time since she's been awake.

But beyond that...

Number one: Hydra knows she hasn't told them everything about Wraith, otherwise she would be dead, and not laying here feeling like she had been hit by a truck.

Second: The cell she's been moved into is made to hold someone much stronger than the average soldier, with solid, rock, walls and the single bed, steel sink, and toilet adhered to the ground by way of being partially sunk into the concrete floor. Highly resistant to being moved by anything short of a jackhammer.

Third: They don't suspect she can do much without her prosthetic, and she can't, really, but they've left her arms free and that's a step (or a wave?) in the right direction. 

And fourth: The cell itself is located underground judging by the vent installed in the low ceiling, and the single stairwell leading up that she can see through the tiny window on the cell’s steel security door. Edith reasons that there could be another stairwell that she can't see, but it's unlikely.

She moves to sit at the edge of the bed and takes a long, slow, deep, breath of hospital-clean air. She needs a plan, a good one, and she can't plan if she's panicking, and she won't panic if she makes herself focus on the task at hand. 

Inhale. Pause. Exhale. 

The air is definitely sterile, recycled, and deliberately unremarkable in terms of temperature and even smell. The walls, floor, and ceiling have been painted a gesso white and the lights are buzzing fluorescent tubes in the ceiling that she can't reach.

The vent in the corner by the bed is producing a soft, cool, current of air. It's too small for her to use for an escape, but large enough that someone could fit surveillance equipment behind the grate.

She stands shakily on the mattress and feels around the vent itself, checking with her fingers for spaces where the current is warmer or lesser or different and finding nothing until her second pass when she squints between the slats she can see the telltale shine of a camera lens.

They're watching. Good.

She sits back down on the bed, considers the single pillow and fitted sheet beneath her fingers and feels an idea begin to form. 

She pulls the sheet from the mattress, and stands, hopping over to the sink. Edith takes a corner, soaking it and tying it in a series of tight knots before wringing it out and returning to crouch by the bed. 

Her aim has never failed her, and when she whips the heavy knot of the sheet up and at the corner of the light she manages to crack the bulb and release it from its cradle without breaking it entirely. She rolls forward as the room goes dark, grabbing the falling bulb before it smashes against the concrete floor, and backs up to the space beside door, sheet and glass in hand. 

Inhale. Pause. Exhale. Footsteps. 

The first guard goes down when she slashes his throat with the jagged end of the light bulb, and she manages to steal his key card, gun, and baton. She strips off his pants and belt as well to replace her own, folding the loose end of the pants inward and tying the end to stop her from tripping on it. Navigating by touch alone, Edith stuffs the baton through her belt loop, and checks the gun over: a loaded 9mm with ammo to spare when she rifles through the guard’s pockets a second time. 

The second guard appears only a few seconds later and she re-uses the lightbulb. It’s messy, and the bulb shatters from impact this time, but she reasons she should be conserving ammunition while she can.

Another gun, and a kevlar vest later, Edith moves outside her would-be prison just as the alarms start going off. 

She immediately discounts the elevator. It would be quicker than the stairs but she doesn't fancy being stuck in a box should Hydra shut the thing down with her inside. 

So, she begins the undignified process of hopping up the stairs, railing in one hand and gun in the other.

She shoots three more guards as they appear on the landing above her, steals a bandolier of grenades from one, and continues. Four more bullets, four more bodies, and another bruise when she has to throw herself out of the way of some kind of high tech caltrop.

There's yelling up ahead when she reaches the door to the second basement, and a fire escape route laminated beneath an extinguisher. She briefly considers taking both, but knows the extinguisher will slow her down, outweighing its benefit as a potential weapon.

Without her leg, she can't exactly blend in with the escaping crowd either. She takes a closer look at the map. There are few labels other than the floor's safety equipment, stairwells, and exits, but it's enough to give her an idea of the building's layout, and which side is facing the Potomac. Steve had told her the helicarriers were being stored underground, under an artificial bay connected to the river. If she can find a vantage point and a radio she might be able to feed Intel to him.

She hears the next door up open, hears a voice over a radio say something about “detaining the prisoner” and a much less fuzzy “tenfour” from the STRIKE agent who still hasn't checked his corners when she points the gun straight at his head. 

His hands fly up immediately, and he goes to back up and out the door, but Edith notices the souped up M40 on his back before he can manage to escape, and suddenly she thinks she can do a lot more than give Steve Intel.

“Give me the Sniper rifle and I'll let you run.” she says.

He stutters, hands climbing higher, “What?”

“You. Me. Fancy gun. Give. Now. Before my finger slips.” she holds out her left hand, the right still aimed at the agent who scrambles to comply with jerky, panicked movements. He passes her the rifle, which is lighter than she suspects, and she slings it over her shoulder, then holds out her hand again “Ammo.” she says, snapping her fingers, and she's handed two mags that she stuffs under her arm before using the pistol in her hand to wave him by. 

She keeps it aimed at him until he's beyond the door, and then stuffs the mags into her bra strap and starts climbing again.

\---

The Triskellion is in chaos as they arrive, and Steve briefly assumes they've been had before the radio Sam takes off a STRIKE agent blares a warning about an asset tearing up the lower levels. 

It makes getting to the com room easy as pie, and Steve’s little pep talk seems to disrupt Hydra’s loyalists enough to give the team room to maneuver. Natasha is already in position, and Hill takes over the coms and starts digging through mission files just as the carriers start their launch sequence. 

Sam follows him out onto the Tarmac, and has barely gotten his feet off the ground when the shooting starts, peppering the ground around him as Steve ducks between shipping crates and uses his shield to deflect the brunt of the damage. 

The top of the helicarrier appears just ahead of him, rising steadily from below ground. He rams into one gunman, then a second, before throwing his shield at a third and hitting a fourth with a rebound. He runs hard, and considers how far he'll have to jump to get on board before it's too high, before he's forced to throw his shield up to defend against a minigun one of the STRIKE agents aims his way. 

Steve counts another two agents moving in to flank him, and curses when they all start shooting at once.

There's a whiplike crack from ahead of him, and the minigun ceases its fire. Two more and the other agents drop like they've had their strings cut. 

Three headshots, straight between the eyes. Something flutters under his ribs at that and he turns to look back at the Triskellion to spot his sniper and hopes-

A bullet cracks against the pavement at his feet. A long-distance “Get moving, soldier!” that he responds to by saluting and resuming his race to the helicarrier. 

He hopes he isn't wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter? Two? 
> 
> Let's bag this rabbit.


	16. Sixteen

His body is heavier than lead, aching from every joint, muscle and bone. Even his brain feels like its in a vise when he tries to use it for anything more than passive observation.

Music, quiet rustling of paper, a breeze passing over his fingers, and a thin, starched, sheet over his lower half. He's sitting up, slightly, supported by a stiff mattress and too-squishy pillow.

A hospital? 

His head protests the attempt at active thought but he pushes on.

He remembers the Triskelion, the Insight Helicarriers, two down and one to go and Bucky…

_ “I'm with you to the end of the line”  _

And then its it's a big, blank space where he's not sure what parts of the roiling mass of images are memories and which are pieces of half-remembered dreams. It all hurts. 

Bucky with a look of confusion painted beneath the rage. His grey eyes are filled with something unintelligible and desperate and he  _ knows _ , somehow, he knows Steve and he can't move to finish him even though his muscles and his mission are screaming for him to  _ just do it, _ just end it. And then Steve is falling and he's cold, so cold, and he thinks that maybe this time he'll find peace because so many people are waiting for him on the other side now.

Peggy is wearing a blue dress and smiling and he pulls her close. His hand cradling the shape of her waist as they sway to some old tune he barely remembers. She wraps her arms around his shoulders and rests her head there, and she sighs softly in his ear “You deserve to live your life too, Steve”

And then he spots Edith across the room, leaning against the wall wearing a relaxed smile and a green plaid dress. But when he tries to go to her the floor seems to fall away and he falls with it…

When we wakes up again it's to the sound of Marvin Gaye.

\---

She looks so small and frail against the white expanse of the hospital bed. Thinner than he’d realized and paler, with the hospital gown exposing the rainbow of bruises around her throat and down the narrow length of her arms. Her eyes seem sunken and there's a furrow between her eyebrows that is the only hint of life in her slowly breathing body.

And God, every part of him is screaming to touch her and make sure she's real. He'd woken up and they told him she was alive, and it had taken a whole thirty three hours for his body to heal enough that he could get out of bed. He wants to card his fingers through her hair and kiss her bruised and bloodied hands, but she's not alone, when Steve wheels himself in. A man in his forties in a black hoodie and well worn combat boots is sitting in the chair by the bed, a coffee in one hand and a dog eared copy of Moby Dick in the other.

Steve thinks he recognizes him. He has a nose that looks like its been broken and reset more than once and a slightly messy crew cut, and when Steve looks at the man's knuckles they're red and scarred over.

“I thought the CIA cordoned off this floor.” Steve says slowly, eyeing the stranger with unhidden suspicion.

“Yeah.” The stranger replies, his voice is deep, rough, like he’s been chewing on gravel. “Ain't gonna stop family though.”

Steve sees no resemblance between the large stranger and Edith aside from the scars, and says as much. 

“Not that kind of family.” The man laughs roughly “We served together. Force recon.

Steve looks closer at the man's battered hands and dirty boots and it clicks. 

“You were in the photo, with Edith and Ramsay.”

The man tips his head in agreement “Yeah. Heard some scuttlebutt that she was ‘dead’ again. Wasn't gonna believe that bullshit til I saw the corpse myself.”

The stranger looks over at Edith, face unreadable, he rubs the back of his head before speaking again:

“She's gonna be pissed when she wakes up. Last time she was in a hospital she lost the leg.”

Steve frowns. The doctors had told him she would recover, given time she would regain the use of the arm that had been nearly crushed completely beneath the falling debris of the Triskelion, but in all likelihood they would have to amputate her other leg below the knee…

“They said it's a miracle she's alive.”

“Try tellin’ her that, Captain. Jack’s not the type to take sittin’ on her ass as a blessing.” 

Steve bristles at that, some protective instinct he has wanting to deny that she could be anything but happy to be alive. 

He thinks back to the dock, the lapping water and the red rim of her eyes that told him she was hurting, and he wants to slap himself for not doing more to help her shoulder that sadness, not prying it out of her and talking about whatever it was that had weighed so heavily on her mind that night.

“We'll figure it out.”  Steve says with a confidence he doesn't quite feel, not yet. 

“ _ We _ , huh?” The man smiles and shakes his head, standing and stretching from his chair. “Good.”

He drains his coffee, tossing the empty paper cup in the bin and setting Moby Dick on the narrow table beside the bed. 

“She ain’t ever gonna stop. Legs or no legs. So you n’ yours better keep an eye on her.”

Steve almost smiles at that. “I don't plan on letting her get hurt again.”

The man, towering over Steve in his wheelchair laughs “See y’ain't listening. It's not ‘bout lettin’ her do anything. Jack's gonna do what she's gonna do.” He looks at her again, a distant fondness in his eyes, “You just gotta keep up and make sure she ain’t doin’ it alone.”

Steve knows the man is right, but can barely stand the idea that she might still try and risk life and limb after everything that's happened. He thinks back to their date, to “No guarantees” and “I can't ask you to stay safe, not really”, and knows he's being hypocritical.

He takes the bruised length of her palm in his own, cool and still against his skin, and thinks that if she's going to get back into the fight, he's going to make sure she's as protected as he can.

The stranger is gone when Steve turns to tell him so.

\---

They save the leg.

It's a close thing, and her knee has to be replaced, and the bones infused with some experimental alloy that Steve is more than happy to pay for, but in the end it's still her leg and its still attached to her body. 

He thinks she'll appreciate that, when she wakes up.

He recovers completely within a few days of his first visit, but has yet to leave the hospital beyond a brief trip to see Director Fury and Natasha before they leave the country. Edith’s eyes have been closed since she arrived and while he's been assured she's more likely to wake up than not he still can't help but worry.

The stranger doesn't visit again, and other than himself and Sam she receives no other guests. He thinks of what she's told him of her family, their disapproval over her service and fighting over her grandfather's belongings before he was even gone. He thinks he wouldn't be able to keep his mouth shut if they showed up and started treating her that way.

But they don't, and Edith sleeps undisturbed even by the quiet music Sam brings and Steve's one sided conversations until a Tuesday afternoon two weeks later. 

Steve sees the change as soon as it happens, he'd gotten so used to the even tempo of her breath as he sketched that the barest shift had him turning in his seat and moving to her side. It's the faintest of groans, and a twitch of her fingers against the sheets, and then her eyes crack open just a fraction.

“Hey.” He whispers, seeing her exhausted gaze dart around the unfamiliar space in confusion. “Edith, it's me, you're safe, I've got you.” 

She frowns, opens her lips to speak but then winces and mouths the word “water” instead. 

Steve grabs a plastic cup off the bedside and fills it from his own water bottle, bringing it to her mouth and helping her tilt her head to take a drink. Urging her to drink slowly earns him a dirty look, and she downs the water in a few parched gulps, swishing some around her mouth before swallowing the last of it and dissolving into a choking fit that bends her double.

Steve rubs between her shoulders, gently as he can and mindful of the still healing bruises speckled down her spine, until the coughing slows and she groans again, falling back against the mattress with a wince and a still-dry sounding “ow”.

He succumbs to the urge to push the hair that's fallen over her face aside, she looks so tired for having slept for nearly a month, but he knows from experience that comas aren't exactly restful. “How are you feeling?”

“ _Sore_.” she says after a moment, eyes still scanning the room. “like someone curb stomped the entire left side of my body and burned the rest.” 

“A building got dropped on you” Steve clarifies, smoothing the hair against her temples with his thumb, palm resting against her jaw. “They had to rebuild your arm and leg- They're still yours” he adds quickly when her eyes widen momentarily “Your bones just have a little bit of metal holding them together now.”

She takes a slow breath, in and out through her nose “I wanna see.” 

He helps her move the hospital sheet aside and sit up some, revealing the metal frame and pins holding her leg together from the middle of her thigh down to the narrow jut of her ankle. It looks like something out of science fiction, bulky and geometric where the shape of her leg is a streamlined curve of muscle. Her arm is completely shrouded in a plaster cast up to her shoulder, covering another maze of scars from the various surgeries it took to save it. 

Edith glares at the leg, makes an irritated noise at the back of her throat, and leans back against the hospital bed once more, eyebrows knit in annoyance. “Six months?”

Steve nods “As little as three, they said, with the infusions they gave you.” He takes her hand, the one not covered in plaster, and runs the pad of his thumb over her knuckles, and then, because he can see the ghost of something in her eyes: “CIA has this whole floor locked down, and I'm sticking around, and when I'm not here Sam will be.” 

She turns her head to look at him directly, lips pressed together in a line, “You don't have to do this”

“You're right. I don't.” He smiles softly “But I've still got some wooing left to do.” 

She softens at that, the corner of her mouth turning upward as she sighs with some small amount of amusement. “His trail is going to go cold.” she doesn't need to elaborate on who she's talking about.

“I know I need to find him.” Steve says finally, “I have a… responsibility to Bucky, but I also have one to you, and Nat, and what's left of SHIELD.” 

Edith makes a face, shakes her head, “I'll be fine.” She says, still so scratchy and dry despite the sip of water she takes when offered. “I'll still be here when you come back. He'll keep getting farther away.” 

“It could take years.”

“It could.” She agrees “But I don't think it will… I think he wants to be found, or at least part of him does.” 

Steve lets his thumb roam over her palm, tracing lines as he thinks. He had been afraid, in a way, that he had been imagining the recognition he saw in Bucky's eyes. “He spoke to you?”

She nods “Not much. He knew you, somewhere in that scrambled head of his, he remembered.” she grips his fingers lightly in her own, lacing them together. “I can keep an eye on things here for you, feed you Intel as it comes up. It wouldn't be goodbye, Steve. I'm not… I don't want that.”

She shifts closer, lifting his palm to cradle the side of her face as gently as he can manage, and she leans into it, smiling softly against his thumb. 

He kisses her just as gently, letting her set the pace and finding her more enthusiastic than she probably has energy for. She comes away breathing hard, red faced, but still grinning at him in a way that makes him lose control of his mouth:

“I love you.”

She laughs, then starts coughing again, and he has to get her another cup of water again before she can respond.

“Oh, good.” she smiles, and then:

 

“I love you too.”

 

END

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit I finished a story. 
> 
> I wanna thank all of you who've read this far, left kudos, or a comment. This has been a learning process for me, and a battle against my brain's carefully designed traps and traitors. 
> 
> I might write something else with Edith, but first I plan on going back through Chiaroscuro and doing a Big Ass Edit of the whole thing. If you come back in a month and notice that everything has been moved around and painted a shiny new colour, rest assured that the structure is still the same, I've just patched the walls up. 
> 
> Thanks again!


End file.
